The Buzz Data Desk journal
THE DESK
Field notes on data licensing, AI and the companies whose records are teaching it how work gets done.
Start here
The essentials every owner should read first.
What AI companies actually buy when they license business data
Not your customer list, and not your financials. Here is what buyers are after, and why the ordinary record of how your company works is worth paying for.
Read the articleFive clauses to check before you license your company’s records
A data license is a contract like any other. These are the terms that matter most, and the questions to put to your lawyer before you sign.
7 min readClosed your business? Your old records may still have value
Companies that have wound down often still hold years of email, chat and CRM history. Whether you can license it comes down to two questions.
5 min readClient NDAs and data licensing: what owners should know
Confidentiality agreements with clients are one of the first concerns owners raise. In most cases they shape the scope of a deal rather than ruling it out.
4 min readMarket notes
What the latest deals, bids and buyer programs tell owners.
Mercor’s 300+ partnerships: what the system mix actually reveals
The headline number is the partnership count. The more useful signal is which systems keep showing up, and why buyers care about the links between them.
5 min readSpirit Airlines’ data drew bids of $10M and more. Here’s what that means for yours.
Google won the auction for Spirit’s internal records at $10 million, and micro1 later offered $12.5 million. It’s the rare deal with public numbers, and it says more about scale than about the typical license.
5 min readSpirit’s exclusions and what they imply for ordinary licenses
The Spirit process is the most detailed public look at how a large archive gets scoped. Operating companies start from a stronger position.
4 min readOwner briefings
How a license works, what stays with you and what buyers value.
The difference between a license and a sale of data
A license grants permission to use a defined, de-identified copy. It does not transfer your data, your systems or your company.
5 min readWhat stays with the company and what moves
Originals stay. Only a de-identified copy of the records you approve moves, and only after the terms are written down.
4 min readWhy cross-system traces are more valuable than single-tool exports
A request starts in email, becomes a ticket, pulls in a document and ends in a decision. Buyers pay for that linked trace, not for any one export.
4 min read