Updated October 2026
Your business closed. Its records may still be worth something
Who is asking
The ads aimed at former owners
micro1 started a closed-company campaign on 2026-10-09: "Did you run a company that's no longer operating?" with the headline "Your previous company's data could be worth up to $2M", for US companies that had 25+ employees at their peak. Data Specialists runs "Closed Your Business? Its Data Could Pay" for companies that had 50+. AI Input says "Closed companies count too".1,3,4
License My Data takes closed companies that had 50+ staff at their peak. Turing's Project Lazarus licenses code, tickets, communications and decision records from winding-down companies, up to $1M in one payment by its own account.5,6
What closed companies got
What shut-down companies' records have actually fetched
SimpleClosure, which handles wind-downs, has done 150+ data deals by MIT Technology Review's count, typically $10K-$100K each by Forbes' account. Cielo24 sold 13 years of Slack, Jira and email for a reported hundreds of thousands of dollars. A shut-down crypto startup got about $25,000 for its code base, with about $15,000 for workspace data pending.2,7,8
Most of these were tech startups with everything in Slack, Jira and Google. A closed print shop, distributor or contractor is a newer kind of seller, and the up-to-$2M in micro1's ad is its own ceiling, not a record.1
First, find the records
Do the records still exist?
Shut-down businesses lose data fast: cancelled email accounts, lapsed software subscriptions, a server sold with the equipment. Start by finding out what survived. An exported mailbox, an old QuickBooks file, a backup drive in someone's garage, the shared drive on a laptop. Owners already search for this: "how long to keep business records after closing" has 5 autocomplete variants.9
SimpleClosure says code, Slack, email and docs are in scope for its deals and that sensitive employee and health records are excluded. Expect the same line from any buyer.10
Who can sign
Who can license a closed company's records?
This is the part that needs care. A dissolved company, a company in a formal wind-down and a company with creditors each raise different questions about who owns the records and who can sign. We do not answer them; they are on the list below for the licensing company, and for your own advisers.
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
Not at SimpleClosure, which excludes sensitive employee and health records.10
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 has authority to sign for a company that has been dissolved or is winding down?
- Who owns this data: the company, an estate, or someone else?
- What are the trustee's, assignee's, receiver's or board's duties, and who receives the proceeds?
- Which proceeding fits: an ABC, Chapter 7, Chapter 11 or a dissolution?
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?