Selling a closing company's records: a guide for insolvency practitioners

In August, as part of Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy, Google agreed to buy the airline's records, including 100 million emails, 500 million Teams messages and 176,000 employee records, for $10 million, as reported by MIT Technology Review. UK estates are far smaller, but buyers now run programmes for exactly this kind of asset. Labelbox Prism says distressed and wound-down companies are among its most active sellers, and AfterQuery welcomes operating, winding-down and closed companies alike.

Why the records have value

AI developers are training systems to do real office work. To do that they need records of how work actually happens: who asked for what, what was decided, how a ticket was resolved, how code was reviewed. That record isn't on the public web, and it can't be recreated. Turing says a long, well-preserved operating history is worth more than a short one.

What buyers look for

• Size and history. Handshake AI asks for 20+ full-time staff and 3+ years in operation; micro1 for 30+ employees. AfterQuery looks for established companies with several teams working across several systems and a few years of history.
• Closed and winding-down companies. AfterQuery accepts them, and Turing's Project Lazarus is for operating and winding-down companies. It pays a single sum of up to $1m for a company's operating record, confirmed after sampling, usually within a week. Labelbox Prism offers single-payment wind-down packages and says a sale can be completed within formal insolvency proceedings.
• Modern systems. Email, Teams or Slack, ticketing, CRM, shared documents and code. Mercor says the more tools are connected, the higher the payout.
• Not mainly sensitive data. Health, care, education, legal and public-sector estates are dominated by special category or privileged material and are rarely suitable.

How many estates fit? In the 90 days to 29 October 2026, 4,798 UK companies entered creditors' voluntary liquidation or administration. 245 of them had 25 or more staff at their last accounts, outside sensitive sectors. See the full breakdown.

Time matters

The most common reason an estate's records can't be realised is that they no longer exist. Systems are switched off, subscriptions lapse and laptops are wiped within weeks of an appointment. The practical first steps:

• Don't wipe servers or laptops yet.
• Keep the email and workspace subscriptions paid for a short period.
• Change admin passwords and record who has access.
• Note where the ticketing, CRM and code systems are hosted.

After that, buyers move in weeks rather than months. AfterQuery replies to enquiries within three business days; Turing confirms its figure after sampling, usually within a week; Mercor pays on delivery, typically 2–4 weeks after signing.

How de-identification works inside the estate's systems

• In our process, records are prepared inside the estate's own environment, and only a cleaned copy is offered for licence.
• Names, email addresses, phone numbers and account numbers are replaced with consistent stand-ins, so threads still read naturally with names removed.
• Some material is excluded entirely: HR and payroll files, health and union information, legally privileged material and customer-confidential records.
• A motivated intruder test, as described in the ICO's anonymisation guidance, tests whether anyone could reasonably be re-identified from what's left.
• The licence should bar the buyer from re-identifying anyone; doing so without consent can also be a criminal offence under section 171 of the Data Protection Act 2018.
• A data protection assessment comes first, including whether the new use is compatible with the purpose the records were originally held for (UK GDPR Art. 8A).

Employees' privacy is a real concern, not a formality: Spirit's flight attendants' union objected to the Google sale on privacy grounds. Excluding HR records and de-identifying before anything moves is how we aim to meet that concern.

Our fee, and buyers' referral rewards

• Commission on realisations only: 20% of the first £100,000, 15% from £100,000 to £500,000, and 10% above. It's paid from the estate as an agent's fee and disclosed to creditors (SIP 9), subject to any approval needed from creditors or a committee. No sale, no fee. The data stays under the office-holder's control.
• Referral rewards go to the estate. Several buyers advertise rewards for introductions (Mercor up to $100,000, AfterQuery up to $85,000, micro1 $75,000 for a closed company's deal up to $1m, or 7.5% of larger deals, Scale up to $50,000, Handshake AI $10,000, Turing up to $10,000). Any reward a buyer pays on an estate's sale is disclosed to creditors and paid to the estate in full.
• Nothing we charge is a payment for an introduction to an appointment.

What we can't promise

Not every estate will sell, and nobody can say in advance what one will fetch. The data protection assessment may conclude that some records, or all of them, shouldn't be licensed. What's certain is that a deleted archive is worth nothing.

See how estate realisation works, and the unnamed list of suitable estates we publish every Monday in the UK Data Estates Bulletin.