Updated October 2026
When your software vendor is sold or goes bankrupt: your data
Most businesses hold their records inside other companies' software. When a vendor is acquired, winds down or enters bankruptcy, the data it holds can become part of its own sale. Hilco, a liquidator and adviser, now lists proprietary enterprise data, codebases and AI training assets as an advisory line covering M&A, bankruptcy and Article 9 sales.1
A live example
What happened in the Spirit Airlines sale
Spirit Airlines' internal archive was put up for sale in its bankruptcy: about 100M emails, 500M Microsoft Teams messages and 176,000 employee records. Google bid $10M against Mercor's $7.5M, and the court has not yet ruled. One of the objectors was a vendor: Springshot claimed ownership of data generated by its service. That is the situation in reverse, a vendor asserting rights over a customer's records.2,3,4
The lesson for an ordinary business is narrower than the headlines. Data generated inside a vendor's tool can be claimed by more than one party, and a sale process is where those claims surface.4
| Fact | Value and source |
|---|---|
| What the Spirit Airlines archive holds | About 100M emails, 500M Microsoft Teams messages and 176,000 employee records |
| A vendor's claim on service data | In the Spirit Airlines sale, the vendor Springshot objected, claiming ownership of data generated by its service |
| Hilco and AI training assets | Lists "Proprietary Enterprise Data, Codebases & AI Training Assets" as an advisory line, covering M&A, restructuring, bankruptcy, Article 9 sales and corporate carve-outs |
Your contracts
Check what your vendor contracts say
FKKS recommends reviewing vendor contracts for what they say about a vendor's sale, shutdown or bankruptcy. The practical items to look for are export rights, notice of a change of control, what happens to your data on termination, and whether the vendor may use your data beyond providing the service. We do not interpret any of them; the questions are below.5
Export first
Keep your own copy
The step that protects you whatever happens is a regular export of your own data. If you might later license your records, it matters twice: licensors buy from the tools themselves. Mercor names Slack, Teams, Gmail, Outlook, Confluence, Salesforce, GitHub, Drive and Notion among 100+ tools; Nyne names QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Salesforce, HubSpot, Asana and Jira. An archive locked in a failed vendor is hard to license, or even to reach.6,7
Wind-down marketplaces show how often tool data is in play when a company fails. SimpleClosure reports Slack in 95% of the workspaces it evaluated, Google Drive in 87% and GitHub in 82%, and MIT Technology Review reports that 47% of its deals now include code or data.8,9
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
Hilco lists enterprise data, codebases and AI training assets as an advisory line in M&A, bankruptcy and Article 9 sales.1
In the Spirit Airlines sale, Springshot claimed ownership of data generated by its service.4
FKKS recommends reviewing what they say about the vendor's sale, shutdown or bankruptcy.5
MIT Technology Review reports 47% of SimpleClosure's deals now include code or data.9
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Legal questions go to the licensing company
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company before you sign: their team reviews these with you.
Questions for this kind of business
- Who owns data generated inside a vendor's tool: us, or the vendor?
- Who owns this data: the company, an estate, or someone else?
- Do customer, vendor or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
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?