Sell software company data and source code to AI companies

What software company data do AI companies buy?

AI companies buy software company data that shows how code changes and why. A repository with its full commit history, linked pull requests and review comments teaches a coding model far more than a snapshot of the current code.

• Repositories with full commit history and branch structure
• Pull requests with review comments and requested changes
• Issue trackers where tickets link to the commits that closed them
• Incident postmortems, runbooks and on-call notes
• Support tickets that escalated to engineering
• Test suites, CI logs and architecture decision records

DataVendor, a marketplace for code and agent tasks, says labs pay more for human-written code, complex products and systems languages such as Rust, Go, C and C++. Linked engineering records can also become agent trajectory data or evaluation tasks, which some buyers price separately.

Retired products count too. A product you closed years ago can still be useful if its repository and tickets survived, and MIT Technology Review's October 2026 reporting describes labs buying data from startups that have shut down.

How much do AI companies pay for software company data?

AI companies publish a range of $50,000 to $500,000 for software company data. That is Mercor's referral listing for software companies of 15 to 500 employees, as reported by ddiy.co in October 2026.

Real sales can land well below that. MIT Technology Review reported in October 2026 that a shut-down crypto startup received about $25,000 for its codebase, with about $15,000 more pending for its workspace data. A small codebase in a common web stack sits at the low end, and a large, long-lived product in a systems language with linked tickets sits higher. Read how to sell source code to AI companies for pricing factors.

Does selling your code give away your product?

Selling your code to an AI company does not hand the buyer your product, but it does put your code into a model you do not control. The buyer is licensing the code to train models, not to run your service, and a license can say so.

The risk to weigh is that a model trained on your code may later help someone build something similar. If you are still operating, you may prefer a license with tight use limits, or sell only once a product is retired. Companies that have closed face fewer such trade-offs, see selling data from a closed company.

You can license code your company owns and that no other license restricts. Under 17 U.S.C. section 201(b), code an employee writes within the scope of employment is a work made for hire, and the employer is treated as its author.

Contractors are different. The Copyright Office's Circular 30 lists nine categories of commissioned work that can be made for hire by written agreement, and software is not named among them, so contractor code generally stays with the contractor unless they assigned it. Under 17 U.S.C. section 204(a), a transfer of copyright is not valid unless it is in a writing signed by the owner.

Buyers run their own license scans, so an accurate list of third-party code in your data manifest builds trust quickly. Removing a secret from the latest commit is not enough because it remains in the history. Tools such as git filter-repo can rewrite history to remove secrets and excluded files, but run the cleanup before you count commits for the manifest, so the numbers match what is delivered.

What customer data sits in engineering records?

Engineering records often hold customer data in logs, database fixtures, support tickets and incident timelines. If you run a SaaS product, you usually hold your customers' data as their service provider or processor, and the contract limits what you can do with it.

The CCPA, at California Civil Code section 1798.140(ag), defines a service provider by a contract that prohibits retaining, using or disclosing the personal information for any purpose other than the business purposes specified. Virginia's privacy law, at Code section 59.1-579(A), says a processor shall adhere to the controller's instructions. Licensing that data to an AI company would fall outside both.

Your own privacy promises matter too. The FTC warned in February 2024 that it may be unfair or deceptive for a company to adopt more permissive data practices, such as using data for AI training, through a quiet retroactive change to its terms. Strip customer data from tickets, logs and fixtures before any sample is drawn, and see support ticket data for how buyers expect it to be cleaned.

If you hold UK or EU data

UK and EU customer data follows the GDPR processor rules. Article 28(3)(a) of the UK GDPR says a processor processes personal data only on documented instructions from the controller, and Article 28(10) treats a processor that decides its own purposes as a controller for that processing.

How does selling software company data work with Sell My Data To AI?

Selling software company data with Sell My Data To AI starts with a consultation about your repositories, languages, years of history and linked systems such as Jira, GitHub or Linear. No code leaves your systems at this stage.

We then help you prepare a manifest of repositories and exclusions, run our eight vetting checks and share a redacted sample with buyers you approve. Buyers' tools never get direct access to your live systems: a fixed export moves only after you sign the license. Book a free consultation to start.