Do we lose ownership of our data?

No, in the programs we track the license covers a copy of the data for a defined use. micro1 and Handshake both say on their sites that the company keeps ownership. Read the grant clause in your agreement to confirm.

Why do AI companies want ordinary business email and tickets?

AI labs are building agents that do office work. To learn how work actually gets done, they need real examples of people coordinating, deciding and fixing problems inside a business. Public internet text does not show that.

How long does a deal take?

It depends on the buyer. Handshake publishes pricing in 12 to 24 hours and 7 to 14 business days to finalize; Mercor says payment typically comes 2 to 4 weeks after signing. Scoping and legal review on your side often take longer than the buyer's process.

How licensing company data to AI works

Why AI companies pay for company data

The large AI labs have trained models on most of the public internet. The next step they are working on is agents that carry out multi-step work inside a business: answering a customer ticket, chasing a late shipment, closing the books. Public text rarely shows how that work is done. Real company records do.

That is why, in 2026, several AI labs and data companies started publishing programs that pay established companies for operational data. micro1 announced a $1 billion, 12-month commitment to buying enterprise data in October 2026 (source). Handshake AI, Mercor and Turing all run company-data programs alongside their better-known expert networks.

What “licensing” means here

In most deals you do not sell your data the way you would sell a truck. You grant a buyer the right to use a copy of specific data, for a defined purpose (AI training and evaluation), for a defined term or perpetually, with or without exclusivity. You keep the original and you keep running your business on it.

That is why we say license rather than sell. The words in your agreement matter more than the word on the website:

Term in the agreement	What to look for
Grant	A license to a copy, for AI training and evaluation, not a transfer of ownership
Scope	A written list of tools, workspaces and date ranges
Term	Fixed term or perpetual
Exclusivity	Whether you can license the same data to anyone else, and for how long
Deletion	When copies are deleted and whether trained models survive
Payment	Amount, structure, trigger and timing

See the agreement terms guide for each clause in detail.

Who the buyers are

Not everyone who pays for company data does the same thing with it. On our tracker we sort programs into four types:

Buyers license data for their own AI training work (for example Handshake AI).
Aggregators pay the company, then license the data on to AI labs (for example micro1, Mercor, Polyshares, Endless Data, Turing Project Lazarus).
Brokers introduce companies to buyers; the buyer pays the company directly (for example Korra, AIData.Broker).
Closure marketplaces sell or license assets of closing companies, data included (SimpleClosure AssetHub).

The type matters because it changes who ends up with your data. With an aggregator, your de-identified data may be licensed to several AI labs you never deal with. See who buys company data.

How a deal works, step by step

Fit check. Buyers publish rough criteria: micro1 asks for 30+ full-time employees, Handshake for 20+ employees and 3+ years in operation, Endless Data for roughly 30+. Most want data in English. Our value check compares your answers with each published criterion.
Scoping. You and the buyer agree which systems and date ranges are in. This is where you exclude customer personal data, client-confidential work, financial accounts and anything regulated.
Offer. Some buyers price from counts and a sample; some ask for a call first. Get more than one offer. Structures differ: a one-time sum (micro1, Polyshares, Endless Data), milestone payments (Handshake) or a revenue share on each resale (Turing).
Agreement. Your lawyer reads it. Check grant, scope, exclusivity, deletion and payment against the table above.
De-identification and transfer. Depending on the buyer you connect tools to its platform (Mercor), export from each system (Turing), or the buyer prepares and transfers the data (Endless Data). Each buyer describes removing names and other identifiers before the data is used.
Payment. Usually on delivery or acceptance of the data, not on signing. Mercor says payment typically comes 2 to 4 weeks after signing; Polyshares says net 30 to 60 after approval.

What you keep and what you give up

You keep the original data, ownership of it and your business. You give up control over the copy you license: once a model has been trained on it, the agreement usually does not require the model to be deleted. One aggregator’s buyer terms we read let its customers keep models trained during the license term after the data itself is deleted (source). That is normal in this market, and it is why scope matters more than price.

Where we fit

SellData.ai does not buy data. We compare the programs above, help you decide what stays out, and introduce you to the ones that fit. The buyer pays us a referral fee; you pay nothing. If none of them fits, we say so.