Closing a company – don't forget to sell your data

Data – the overlooked asset when you close a company

When a company is wound down, equipment, receivables, trademarks and contracts are all inventoried. Data rarely makes the list. Email archives, Slack history, support tickets and documents are seen as something to archive or delete – not as something that might have value.

That is changing. AI labs are increasingly buying workplace data such as Slack, email and support tickets to train AI agents. In the US, shut-down startups have sold their Slack and email archives to AI companies, as reported by Fast Company, Gizmodo and Forbes, among others. A company being wound down often has a complete history from start to finish, and that kind of whole picture is exactly what is interesting to those training agents.

Selling data from a closed company – in different types of wind-down

How it works depends on how the company is being closed. The terms and procedures vary by country, so treat the following as general information.

Voluntary liquidation

In a liquidation, the company's assets are realized and its debts paid before it is dissolved. A data license can be one of those assets. That requires the liquidator to know about the option in time – before archives are deleted or systems are cancelled.

Insolvency

In an insolvency or bankruptcy, an appointed administrator or trustee manages the assets. Data can in some cases add value to the estate, but the administrator needs to be able to assess rights and personal data before anything can be licensed.

Asset sale

If the business is sold but not the company itself, data sometimes goes with the buyer and sometimes doesn't. Whatever stays behind in the old company may be worth looking at before it is wound down. Also check what the transfer agreement says about data and archives.

What data is usually left?

• Email archives with years of business communication
• Slack and Teams history
• Support tickets and chat logs
• CRM history and exports from business systems
• Documents, manuals and intranets
• Published content, images, video and source code

Content archives where the company owns the copyright are often the simplest. Operational data with a lot of personal data takes more work and cannot always be licensed. Read about what different types of data can be worth on what is your data worth.

Timing is everything

The most common reason data from a closed company never becomes revenue is that nobody thought of it in time. Once the wind-down is under way, licenses and cloud services are cancelled, accounts are closed and archives are deleted. By then it is too late.

So include the data in your inventory as soon as the decision to wind down is made. Avoid deleting archives prematurely, as long as that is consistent with your retention rules for personal data, and don't pass them on until the assessment is done. Read more in the guide Closing your company? Don't forget your data.

GDPR still applies when the company closes

A wind-down does not remove your obligations for personal data. A few things to keep in mind:

• Purpose. European data protection authorities stress that reusing data for AI training must be compatible with the purpose the data was originally collected for.
• Legal basis. Legitimate interest is not automatically a basis for AI training. The European Data Protection Board requires a documented balancing test.
• Synthetic data is processing too. Generating synthetic data from personal data is itself processing of personal data.
• Employee data. Employees' emails and chats are covered by workplace privacy rules, and depending on your country, consultation with employee representatives or a works council may be required.
• Sensitive data. We do not handle health data.

That is why we assess rights and personal data first, prioritize data without personal data and plan de-identification before delivery. Read more about GDPR and anonymization. This is general information, not legal advice – in a wind-down, the liquidator, administrator or your own lawyer should always be part of the assessment.

How it works

1. Describe the data in our form. It takes about two minutes and needs no files. Let us know about the wind-down timeline if you can.
2. We assess rights, personal data and demand, and get back to you within 48 hours on business days.
3. You or the administrator approve a concrete offer. Nothing is shared until a non-disclosure agreement is in place.
4. Delivery and payment take place after de-identification.

By default the license is non-exclusive and limited in scope, time and use. The assessment costs nothing – we only get paid when a deal goes through.