The debtor's records are an estate asset. AI developers are now buying them.

Buyers include frontier AI developers, AI data companies that build training and evaluation environments, and technology companies training their own models. Spirit's auction drew Google and Mercor.io, and a third AI data company filed a notice of intent to bid.⁵ We qualify buyers on financial capacity, security posture, deidentification practice, and willingness to accept use and onward-transfer restrictions.

Most valuable are long-running, connected records of real work: email, chat, shared documents, tickets and case histories, project and workflow systems, operational logs, code repositories, and domain-specific systems of record. Ten to twenty years of history and unusual industries tend to add value. Structured consumer databases are usually excluded. Value depends on depth and variety, not volume alone.⁸

The timetable depends on the case, the data, and the objections. In Spirit, the bidding procedures order was entered June 22, 2026, the auction was held August 14, and the sale hearing originally set for August 19 has been adjourned to November 6.⁴⁵ Our aim is to complete inventory, exclusions, deidentification design, and stakeholder engagement before marketing begins, which is where most of the delay in Spirit arose.

Yes. Spirit marketed its deidentified data under the same bidding procedures order that governed other assets, as a separate lot with its own auction and hearing.⁵ A data sale can also proceed later in the case, or in a liquidating or post-confirmation trust where the plan permits.

Contact us promptly. Litigation holds, retention obligations, and plan provisions may already govern the records. We can help counsel assess what remains, whether a sale is still practical, and whether any relief from a retention or destruction order is appropriate.

Under section 363(b)(1), if the debtor disclosed a privacy policy prohibiting transfer of personally identifiable information and that policy was in effect on the petition date, the sale of that information must either be consistent with the policy or be approved after appointment of an ombudsman under section 332 and appropriate findings by the court. Many data sales are structured to exclude consumer PII entirely. Even so, courts and the U.S. Trustee may favor appointment where consumer data could be present in the records, as occurred in Spirit by stipulation.⁵ We generally recommend addressing the question at the outset rather than near the sale hearing.

That is correct, and it is the most active issue in this area. The definition of personally identifiable information in section 101(41A) is framed around consumers, and the Spirit ombudsman expressly did not assess employee risk.⁶ Unions in Spirit relied instead on section 107(b), collective bargaining agreements, and sector statutes.⁵ Our process screens personnel, payroll, medical, disciplinary, grievance, and union-related records for exclusion or additional protection, and we recommend early engagement with labor representatives where they exist.

Prospective buyers sign an NDA approved by the estate before receiving any material. They see a written description and redacted, deidentified samples in a controlled viewer with watermarking and logging. No full dataset is released before entry of a sale order and completion of certified deidentification.

Generally, records the debtor created or owns in the ordinary course are property of the estate under section 541 and may be sold under section 363(b) after notice and a hearing. The threshold question in each case is whether specific data is in fact estate property. Data generated by a vendor's platform, licensed datasets, and material subject to confidentiality agreements may belong to others or carry restrictions. In Spirit, a software vendor and an engine manufacturer raised exactly those issues.⁵ We identify those categories during inventory, before the asset schedule is filed.

A sale order can provide free and clear relief under section 363(f) and good-faith purchaser protection under section 363(m), but privacy policy commitments, state deidentification standards, and employment law obligations may follow the data regardless.²⁰ Buyer-side covenants on reidentification, use restrictions, and onward transfer, together with independent certification, reduce that exposure. Counsel should evaluate residual risk in each case.

We are retained by the debtor or trustee under section 327, with terms approved under section 328. We offer either a percentage of sale proceeds or a flat fee. Section 328(a) permits employment on any reasonable terms, including percentage and contingent fee arrangements, subject to the court's authority to revisit terms that prove improvident in light of developments not capable of being anticipated. We file the customary declaration addressing disinterestedness under section 327.

Under the percentage structure, the estate pays no advisory fee unless a sale closes, and the fee is paid from proceeds. Under the flat-fee structure, the cost is fixed and approved at retention. In Spirit, the buyer bore the cost of independent deidentification without reduction of the purchase price.⁵ Whether that term is obtainable depends on the market for the specific data, and we negotiate it where we can.