Spirit Airlines filed for bankruptcy in November 2024 and, after emerging from bankruptcy, filed again in August 2025. During the second case, the company tried to find a way to keep the airline in business but to no avail. In May 2026, Spirit Airlines pivoted towards a wind-down and ceased operations.

This summer, as a part of its wind-down, Spirit Airlines began marketing its remaining assets. It had plenty of traditional assets to sell. For example, the debtors’ bid procedures motion filed in May 2026 listed the following assets: takeoff and landing slots at LaGuardia Airport; aircraft hangar(s); corporate headquarters; training center; multi-family residential buildings; ground service equipment; spare engines; flight simulators; aircraft maintenance equipment; and assets related to the debtors’ loyalty program.

The bid procedures also listed a catchall category for “other intangible assets and/or other assets that the Debtors and their advisors shall identify and make available for diligence in the Data Room.” At first blush, this vague category may not appear important or interesting. In fact, it may be hard to imagine what assets even fall into this miscellaneous bucket that could have more than de minimis value.

But AI companies see value in unusual places.

Because AI models learn from analyzing vast amounts of data, companies looking to train their AI models seek access to comprehensive data sets. AI companies looking to gain a competitive edge need to feed their AI models private, unique data that is not available to rival AI companies. From that perspective, data that was essentially valueless several years ago, such as email and chatroom data, can become incredibly important.

And this means that Spirit Airlines may be able to realize millions of dollars in value for these previously inconsequential assets.

On August 14, 2026, Spirit Airlines announced that Google had won a competitive auction for its data with a bid of $10 million. Google’s intention with this purchase is clear—a spokesperson for Google announced that the data would be valuable for improving AI models. Spirit Airlines also announced that the backup bidder is another AI company, Mercor, which bid $7.5 million. No doubt, Mercor wanted to buy Spirit Airlines’ data for the same reason as Google.

The data that Google intends to purchase includes years’ worth of emails, chatroom messages, calendar invites, spreadsheets, and presentations. It also includes data related to employee behavior and productivity, revenue and yield management, aircraft operations and logistics, project management, and corporate finance.

Google’s purchase will not be finalized until after a court hearing scheduled for September 9, 2026, and the proposed purchase is not without its challenges. Labor groups have filed limited objections, citing concerns about employees’ personal information being included in the sale. Another objector argued that its intellectual property is improperly included in the proposed sale.

However, there may also be larger, existential issues to consider.

It has widely been reported that AI poses a threat to workers’ job security worldwide as AI becomes increasingly capable of automating existing jobs. In just a few years, AI could eliminate millions of jobs in various sectors, including customer service, software, manufacturing, medicine, and the law, with significant social, political, and economic consequences.

Feeding AI the private, corporate data of companies, even defunct airlines like Spirit, could quicken the automation of white-collar jobs. How bankruptcy courts will grapple with concerns raised about the sale of such data remains to be seen.