Google has acquired the corporate data of the defunct airline Spirit Airlines after winning a bankruptcy auction held in the United States. The agreement is valued at US$10 million, which is equivalent to approximately R$52 million at the current exchange rate, transferring the aviation company's digital archive to the search giant.
The purpose of this acquisition is to utilize the extensive history of business metrics and operational communications to refine language models and improve the company's artificial intelligence products. The transaction covers a considerable volume of documentation, although its officialization depends on the final approval of a federal judge.
According to the case files, the transfer includes nearly 100 million corporate emails, over 500 million conversations exchanged via Microsoft Teams, in addition to schedules, financial audits, and materials used in marketing campaigns.
Furthermore, Google will take possession of 30 million lines of code, development metadata, the airline's software algorithms, along with detailed data on revenue, aircraft operation metrics, and personnel and human resources productivity reports.
The large technology company intends to analyze all this documentary material to nourish its neural networks with scenarios and solutions from the real corporate environment, given that current AI models show limitations in certain executive tasks. An example of this restriction was observed when Anthropic used its Claude model to manage an automated sales machine, resulting in erroneous decisions and losses.
The inclusion of the database of such a complex logistics and corporate operation as Spirit Airlines provides valuable information on how a large corporation deals with suppliers, manages crises, and makes managerial decisions.
A Google spokesperson confirmed this plan to the Bloomberg agency, stating: 'We acquired part of a set of corporate data from Spirit Airlines that may be useful for enhancing our AI products and models.'
The sales contract stipulates the prohibition of transferring any personal information. From this batch, about 97.5 million passenger profiles from Spirit Airlines were removed, added to more than 50 million records from the company's loyalty program members. The commercialized corporate data will be classified as 'de-identified,' ensuring that no record can be linked to a specific individual. The agreement also obligates Google not to create tools designed to attempt user re-identification.
The collapse of Spirit Airlines occurred after the company faced two judicial recoveries in 2025, accumulating losses of US$257 million (equivalent to R$1.3 billion), and had a request for government bailout of US$500 million (R$2.6 billion) rejected by creditors. In May of this year, the company formally ceased operations. It is important to note that Spirit never operated regular passenger flights in Brazil.
According to CEO Dave Davis, the service became unviable due to rising fuel costs, driven by geopolitical conflicts involving the US, Israel, and Iran, marking the first closure of a major American airline since the bankruptcy of Midway Airlines after the September 11, 2001 attacks.