Micro1’s Late Bid Tests Google’s Spirit Airlines Data Deal

Micro1, an AI training startup, is making a late $12.5 million offer for Spirit Airlines’ data after Google successfully bid $10 million for it. Micro1 CEO Ali Ansari told Business Insider the company is making a “materially higher” offer, and a person familiar with the matter said the offer was sent to Spirit Airlines’ legal team on Wednesday. Spirit Airlines is selling assets, including corporate data, in bankruptcy court after going under last year.

Ansari said Micro1’s interest reflects the value of company data for training AI models, especially data with messy, real-world inputs. He said “realistic data is very valuable” and called Google’s winning bid “actually quite low” given Spirit Airlines’ decades of operation. Micro1 pays other companies up to $2 million for their data, pays gig workers to improve AI models, and runs digital environments where AI agents can practice tasks such as booking train tickets.

Bankruptcy experts told Business Insider it would be unusual, but not impossible, for the court to consider Micro1’s offer after it missed the original auction deadline. The tension is whether a higher late bid could generate more money for creditors and shareholders, versus the need to preserve the integrity of the auction process. Nancy Rapoport, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said a well-run auction generally will not get undone, while Emory University law professor Lindsey Simon said the bankruptcy code is not clear on the issue.

The federal bankruptcy court in New York has not yet approved the auction results. A hearing was delayed after former Spirit Airlines flight attendants objected over concerns about what would happen to their data. Google previously told Business Insider that any data it receives will be “rigorously scrubbed” of personally identifiable information by a third party. A hearing for the data sale is scheduled for September 9, and Ansari said Micro1 is working on submitting details about its offer to the court.