What published programs pay
| Program | Published range | Eligibility |
|---|---|---|
| Published licensing programs | $100K to $4M+ | 20+ employees, 3+ years operating |
These are ranges, not offers. Calto Data’s free two-minute check tells you whether your records fit what buyers ask for.
What comparable deals sold for
| Deal | Reported value |
|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines internal records → Google (2026) | $10M winning bid; Mercor bid $7.5M (Skift) |
| Closed startup’s code and workspace data, via SimpleClosure (2026) | About $25,000 for code, with a further payment of roughly $15,000 expected for workspace data (MIT Technology Review) |
| Reddit licensing deals (2024) | $203M in aggregate contracts disclosed in its IPO filing (TechCrunch) |
| News Corp → OpenAI (2024) | Reported as more than $250M over five years (VentureBeat) |
| Shutterstock AI licensing (2023) | $104M in revenue (Bloomberg Law) |
The Spirit sale is the closest precedent for most businesses: it priced the operating records of an ordinary company — finance, operations, roughly 100 million emails and code — with customer data excluded. Final court approval had not been confirmed at the time of writing.
What raises the value
- Depth of history. Ten years of linked records beat one year of snapshots.
- Complete tasks. Records that connect a problem, the reasoning and the result.
- Specialist content. Engineering, inspection and process knowledge that isn’t on the public web.
- Consistency. Dated, structured records in a few well-used systems.
- Clean rights. Records your company created and can authorize without third-party consent.
- Exclusivity. Buyers pay more if the data isn’t licensed to others.
- Language. Non-English professional records can be scarce, though some programs only accept English.
What lowers the value
- Mostly personal information that must be removed.
- Records that belong to clients or are covered by strict confidentiality terms.
- Short history, scattered files or heavy gaps.
- Data already widely licensed or publicly available.
How to get an estimate
An honest estimate needs a description of your systems, record types, history and volumes — not the records themselves. Calto Data’s free check asks 12 questions and takes about two minutes. If there’s a fit, we discuss realistic ranges before any introduction.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a price per record or per gigabyte?
Not publicly. Programs price whole collections based on usefulness, so a smaller, richer dataset can be worth more than a larger, thin one.
Does Calto Data guarantee a price?
No. Buyers set their own eligibility and pricing. Published figures are context, not an offer.
Do we get paid once or every year?
Most published business-data deals are one-off licence fees. Ongoing feeds, such as agent-trajectory data, can be paid annually.
Does exclusivity increase the price?
Usually. A buyer that can keep the data from competitors will normally pay more, but exclusivity limits your future options.