AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models | MIT Technology Review
AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models | MIT Technology Review
摘要: Artificial intelligence
AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models
Most startups fail. A new industry is giving their data an
正文
Artificial intelligence
AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models
Most startups fail. A new industry is giving their data an afterlife in AI.
Matthew King
archive page
October 13, 2026
Eva Redamonti
When Keelan Miskell began winding down his crypto startup this year, he didn’t think its data was worth much: the users were anonymous, the company just a few years old. But he’s since turned the firm’s digital archives into real money. He’s netted roughly $25,000 for his code base and a still-pending amount (likely around $15,000) for the workspace data in Google, Notion, Figma, and Slack. “At least all that stuff we were doing for two and a half years is worth something to someone somewhere,” he says.
The sale was brokered by a company called SimpleClosure, part of a new growth sector in tech: businesses catering to dying startups. Estimates from
AngelList
show shutdowns rising between 26% and 56% annually in recent years, and an end-of-life ecosystem—including coaches, “death doulas,” and firms that help handle the legal, tax, and operational headaches of going belly-up—has emerged. Now tech undertakers are selling the data remains to AI labs.
SimpleClosure
added data sales
to its services in April. Its Asset Hub platform helps founders sell their code and workspace data—emails, chats, documents. Buyers include foundation AI labs, vendors that construct simulated workspaces for AI training, and mature tech companies building their own models. Asset Hub has handled over 150 deals and expects to return over $10 million to startups by the end of 2026. CEO Dori Yona has seen these transactions, once rare and “somewhat taboo,” become increasingly routine, with 47% of SimpleClosure deals now including code or data sales.
And it’s got company. Industry rival Sunset also has a rapidly growing data resale business. Founder and CEO Brendan Mahony says Sunset values a dying client’s assets by head count, years in operation, v