Simple Closure brokers over 100 data deals from dead startups

AI labs are increasingly purchasing data from defunct startups to train models, a trend facilitated by Simple Closure. The company has brokered over 100 transactions since April and expects to return more than $10 million to closed startups by the end of the year. In one notable transaction, Google reportedly outbid Merkur to acquire data from Spirit Airlines, including 100 million emails, 500 million Teams messages, and 176,000 employee records, for a bid of $10 million. According to estimates from Carta and AngelList, startup shutdowns are rising between 26% and 56% annually. Consequently, 47% of Simple Closure's shutdown deals now include code or data sales, a practice that was previously considered taboo. Keelan Miskell, whose crypto startup closed, received approximately $25,000 for his codebase and expects an additional $15,000 for workspace data from Google, Notion, Figma, and Slack. The broker views this as a viable business model, arguing that private companies should be paid for their data rather than having it scraped, and that workspace data is particularly valuable due to employee-generated content.