Updated October 2026
What is a company data partnership?
A data partnership is a paid license: you let a company that supplies AI labs use a cleaned copy of your business records. micro1 calls its program a company data partnership and quotes $100K-$2M+ per package; Mercor runs Mercor Data Partnerships. "Partner" here is a sales word; the programs we found pay a license fee, not a stake.1,2
In plain words
What the ad was actually offering
micro1's estimator ad says companies are earning $100K-$2M+ by licensing anonymized operational data. "Operational data" means the records of how your business runs: SOPs and playbooks, knowledge bases, project workflows, internal comms, CRM and workflow metadata, task histories. "Anonymized" means personal details removed first.3,4
Mercor describes its version as connecting to the tools you already use and anonymizing what is inside. It names Slack, Teams, Gmail, Outlook, Confluence, Salesforce, GitHub, Drive and Notion among 100+ tools.2,5
Two kinds
Existing records, or new work from your team
micro1 describes two tracks in its own video. "Corpus" means sharing records you already have: about 1-3 hours to build a data manifest (a list of what exists) and up to 10 engineering hours to transfer it. "Workflows" means your employees write prompts and give feedback, which is paid work from your team rather than a one-time license of old files.6,7
Why "partner"
Why they call it a partnership
The word signals that the deal can repeat. micro1's ads say deals have "opportunities to become recurring". It also signals a relationship rather than a cash-for-files transaction, which reads better to an owner nervous about selling anything. The word that matters in the agreement is license.8
In the programs we found it is not an offer of equity or a role in running your business; whether an agreement creates any legal partnership is a question for the licensing company. micro1 says the company keeps ownership of its data and reviews samples before release. Who the ultimate partner is can be unclear: MIT Technology Review found sellers often cannot see which AI lab ends up with the data.9,10
Who runs these programs
Who offers data partnerships
micro1 runs the largest, a $1B commitment over 12 months, financed by Citi and Hercules Capital, aimed at companies of 30 to 200 employees. Mercor claims over 300 enterprise partners and payments of up to $10M per enterprise, and advertises to large companies. Nyne and Polyshares run similar programs without the word.11,12,13,14,15
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
A paid license of a cleaned copy of your business records to a company that supplies AI labs. micro1 quotes $100K-$2M+ per data package for its program.1
Records of how your business runs: micro1 lists internal docs, SOPs and playbooks, knowledge bases, project workflows, internal comms, templates and task histories.4
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 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?