How much is company data worth to AI labs?
October 26, 2026 · 7 min read
Licensed packages of company data commonly pay $100K to $2M+ for one licence. Where a company lands in that range depends less on how many terabytes it stores and more on how much of its real work is on record: years of continuous history, decisions with their outcomes, and expertise other companies don’t have.
The short answer
| Tier | Typical company |
|---|---|
| $100K+ | A qualified partnership: a mature company, 25+ employees, with several years of well-documented work. |
| $500K+ | Large-scale datasets, or ongoing supply across several teams and business functions. |
| $1M+ | Highly unique operational data that few other companies hold, often from specialist fields. |
What moves the price
- Continuous history. Years of records on the same tools are worth far more than the same years split across systems. Context breaks when a team switches tools.
- Complete workflows. Labs pay most for sequences that run from problem to decision to outcome: a support ticket through to its resolution, a deviation through to its corrective action.
- Volume. The cleaned dataset has to stay substantial after identifying details are removed.
- Expertise. Legal, financial, engineering, scientific and other specialist work is harder to find and priced higher.
- Rarity. Knowledge that few companies hold, or a niche few labs have seen, raises the number.
- Clean rights. Data the company owns outright, with no contracts blocking secondary use, is the only data a lab can license.
What lowers it
- Records split across several tools over the years, so only recent years carry full context.
- Sparse CRM fields, marketing content on its own, or thin activity logs.
- Client data the company doesn’t control, which is common at agencies and consultancies.
- Highly regulated personal records, such as patient, clinical or genomic data, that can’t be de-identified without losing the workflow.
Example estimates
| Company | Records | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| 30-person accounting firm | 8 years of email, CRM, accounting and files | $90K to $200K |
| 80-person logistics company | 12 years of email, chat, CRM, support tickets and job records | $200K to $435K |
| 150-person software company | 10 years of email, chat, code, support tickets and projects | $290K to $635K |
| 400-person manufacturer | 20 years of email, CRM, accounting, SOPs, quality records and drawings | $840K to $1.9M |
Made-up companies, priced by our instant estimate. These are estimates, not offers; an offer follows a review of the actual data.
How and when the money arrives
The company is paid when a lab licenses the data. On deals through 6/8 Labs that happens in as little as 7 days and within 60 days at most, under the signed agreement. Nothing is signed until a buyer wants the data, and the company approves every deal in writing. Anyone who referred the company is paid separately, on top of the company’s price.
Questions
Is data priced by the terabyte?
Not by serious buyers. Some price on headcount and storage size alone, but what moves the number is depth: years of continuous history, records that show decisions and outcomes, and specialist expertise. A small archive with full context can be worth more than a large, patchy one.
Does an exclusive licence pay more?
It should. A non-exclusive licence lets the same data be licensed to more than one buyer. If a buyer wants exclusivity, it should pay more for it and the exclusivity should end on a set date.
How quickly is the company paid?
On deals through 6/8 Labs, in as little as 7 days after a lab licenses the data and within 60 days at most, under the signed agreement.
Can a small company sell its data?
Companies need at least 25 employees, and for US companies that means W-2 employees; contractors don't count. Below that, there is rarely enough volume or documented process for a lab to license.
Does selling data mean giving up ownership?
No. A licence grants agreed uses for an agreed period. The company keeps ownership of the underlying data, and identifying details are removed before any lab sees a record.
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