Updated October 2026
Selling a defunct company's Slack or Teams archive
Your company has shut down, or is about to, and years of Slack or Microsoft Teams history sit in a workspace someone is still paying for. That history can be licensed to AI buyers, and buyers have shown up at both ends of the size range, from small startups to an airline whose filings counted 500M Teams items. Whether Slack itself sells data is a different question, and not one this page covers.1,2
Why chat
Chat is the tool almost every closing company leaves behind
SimpleClosure says Slack turned up in 95% of the closing-company workspaces it evaluated, ahead of Google Drive at 87% and GitHub at 82%. For a small company, the chat history is often the most complete record of how decisions were made: who asked for what, which fixes were tried, and why a plan changed. That running record of work, more than any single document, is what buyers are after.3
Buyers have paid for it. Cielo24 sold 13 years of Slack, Jira and email for what was reported as "hundreds of thousands of dollars", and MIT Technology Review reports that Mercor has gone after shuttered startups' Slack and Jira archives. Buyers we work with name Slack and Teams among the systems they take.2,4,5,6
| Fact | Value and source |
|---|---|
| Tools in closing companies' workspaces | Slack in 95% of workspaces SimpleClosure evaluated, Google Drive in 87%, GitHub in 82% |
| Cielo24 archive sale | Cielo24 sold 13 years of Slack, Jira and email for "hundreds of thousands of dollars" |
| Mercor and closed startups' archives | Mercor has pursued shuttered startups' Slack and Jira archives |
Teams at scale
What the Spirit filings say about a Teams tenant
The flight attendants' objection in Spirit's Chapter 11 case lists 500M Teams items, alongside 17,082,644 OneDrive items, 20,577,677 SharePoint items and about 100M emails. That is the largest Microsoft 365 archive we know of that has been put up for sale to AI bidders.1
Google is the successful bidder for that archive at $10.0M. As of mid-October 2026 the court had not approved the deal, and a hearing is scheduled for 2026-11-06, so it is a live case rather than a finished sale.7,8
Before it lapses
Keeping the workspace alive long enough to sell it
aitrainer.work notes that Slack, Google Workspace and GitHub organizations are deleted after non-payment. It suggests keeping the plan paid until a buyer has sampled the data, and asking support whether a lapsed workspace can be restored.9
Chat is rarely sold alone. In one wind-down MIT Technology Review describes, a crypto startup sold its code base for about $25,000, then offered workspace data from Google, Notion, Figma and Slack, with about $15,000 pending for that part. Export every connected tool, not only the chat, and take the match quiz while the workspace is still live: it shows which buyers take a closed company's archive.10,11
Platform terms
The platform's terms are a question for the buyer
Whether Slack's or Microsoft's terms limit exporting a workspace for licensing, and how employees' direct messages are treated, are not questions we answer. Put them to the licensing company before anything is exported; we list them below. Buyers such as SimpleClosure say they strip personal details from every dataset before licensing.12
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
SimpleClosure says Slack was in 95% of the workspaces it evaluated, Google Drive in 87% and GitHub in 82%.3
Cielo24 sold 13 years of Slack, Jira and email for what was reported as "hundreds of thousands of dollars".2
The filings count 500M Teams items, plus OneDrive and SharePoint items in the tens of millions and about 100M emails.1
aitrainer.work says Slack, Google Workspace and GitHub organizations get deleted after non-payment.9
About $15,000, still pending when MIT Technology Review reported it, after about $25,000 for the code base.10
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Questions to talk through with your buyer
Every business is different, so these are best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over them with you before anything is signed.
Questions for this kind of business
- Do the Slack API terms or Microsoft's product terms restrict using an export for AI training?
- How are private channels and direct messages between employees handled, and does union membership change that?
- Do CCPA or GDPR apply to former employees named in the chat history?
- Do customer, vendor or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
- How are employee data, union contracts and NLRA questions handled?
- How do CCPA, GDPR, UK GDPR and state privacy laws apply, and is de-identified data still personal information?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?