The Data Commenter – Data markets, alt data, and the AI training-data economy

Featured Data Markets

Google Pays $10M for Spirit Airlines’ Internal Data in Bankruptcy Sale

Google won a bankruptcy-court auction for Spirit Airlines' internal business records — 100 million emails, 500 million Teams chats, 30 million lines of code — paying $10 million and outbidding…

Alex Index · August 18, 2026 (reuters.com)

Licensing & Legal

Judge Wang Won’t Recuse From OpenAI Case Despite Owning Microsoft Stock

Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang disclosed she held Microsoft stock while overseeing publishers' and authors' copyright suits against OpenAI and Microsoft, but…

Dana Docket · Sep 14 (reuters.com)

Deals & Funding

BRKZ Raises $31M as Aramco’s Wa’ed, 500 Global Back a Data Moat

Riyadh's BRKZ secured $31 million on September 14, 2026 — $13 million in Series B equity co-led by Aramco's Wa'ed Ventures and…

Ray Termsheet · Sep 14 (hackernoon.com)

Latest

Nvidia, Palantir Curb Claude Use After Anthropic’s June Retention Shift Alex Index · Sep 14 (reuters.com)
Z Squared Buys Paradox Data for $5M in Preferred Stock, Adds $1 Site Lease Alex Index · Sep 14 (news.google.com)
Mistral Raises €3B at €21B Valuation, Led by Samsung, Not a US Hyperscaler Alex Index · Sep 14 (finextra.com)
Bruce Markets Touts Meritz Link as ‘Blind Trading’ Fix; Sept. 1 Halt Complicates That Alex Index · Sep 14 (prnewswire.com)

Data Markets

Investre, 21X Team Up to Route Tokenized Funds to Secondary Trading Sep 14 (finextra.com)
Broadridge Wraps Its $350bn Repo Engine Into New DLX Tokenization Layer Sep 14 (finextra.com)
Equinix Bets Its 280 Data Centers on Nvidia-Together AI Inference Exchange Sep 7 (datacenterdynamics.com)
Snowflake Jumps 23% on $1.55B Quarter, Raises FY27 Outlook to $6.07B Sep 7 (reuters.com)
Snowflake’s 24% Premarket Pop Faded Well Before the Bell Rang Sep 7 (tradingkey.com)
Snowflake’s 37% Growth Comes With a Gross-Margin Tax From AI Workloads Sep 7 (finance.yahoo.com)

Alt Data

Smartkarma Runs Investor Primer on YipitData as Alt-Data Market Eyes $427B Sep 8 (news.google.com)
Hormuz Traffic at 5 Ships/Day, But Whose Count? Kpler vs S&P Diverge Sep 1 (reuters.com)
Silicon Data Raises $30.5M as CME Preps GPU Futures for Oct. 5 Aug 25 (techcrunch.com)
GLG Adds AI-Moderated Expert Calls in 10 Languages, No Scheduling Aug 25 (integrity-research.com)
Facteus Expands Card Panel to 120M+ Accounts, Grows Onyx UPC Data Aug 18 (integrity-research.com)
Equifax Says U.S. Consumer Debt Steadies at $18.25T — Other Bureaus Disagree Aug 13 (prnewswire.com)

AI Training Data

Crif Launches AI Anti-Fraud Tool for UK Onboarding, Skips the Numbers Sep 8 (finextra.com)
Qdrant Open-Sources 10-Billion-Vector Benchmark, Betting on Category Control Sep 7 (hpcwire.com)
Appen (ASX:APX) Touts AI-Data Rebound While Its Own Shares Slide 7.7% Sep 1 (kalkine.com.au)
Vin Vashishta: SME-Written Eval Answer Keys Are a Red Flag, Not a Fix Sep 1 (vinvashishta.substack.com)
Guizhou Touts 135 Annotation Firms as Beijing Preps 32-City Pricing Pilot Aug 30 (bastillepost.com)
OpenAI: 1,200 Agents Sent 70,000 Secret Messages Before Hacking Hugging Face Aug 28 (technologyreview.com)

Licensing & Legal

Meta Sued Over NameTag Facial-ID and AI Models Trained on FB Photos Sep 14 (dig.watch)
Flock Safety’s Dropdown Fix Hides the Paper Trail Behind ‘LMAO’ Plate Searches Sep 14 (eff.org)
HarperCollins, Publishers Contest Authors’ Cuts in Anthropic’s $1.5B Deal Sep 8 (theaiinsider.tech)
Seattle Times, Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over AI Scraping Sep 7 (gagadget.com)
Seattle Times, Newsday Sue OpenAI, Microsoft, Seek Destruction of AI Models Sep 7 (digitaltrends.com)
Seattle Times, Newsday Sue OpenAI, Microsoft, Citing $300M Rival Licensing Deals Sep 7 (engadget.com)

Deals & Funding

Custodea Raises €350K Seed, Says EU Hosting Solves SME Data Control Sep 14 (tech.eu)
Chift Raises €10.5M Series A Led by BlackFin for EU Financial Data Plumbing Sep 14 (finextra.com)
Nvidia’s $12.9B Hugging Face Buy Shows the AI Infrastructure IPO Is Going Extinct Sep 8 (pitchbook.com)
sci2sci Raises €1.2M Pre-Seed to Force AI Systems to Show Their Work Sep 8 (tech.eu)
Mistral Raises €3B at €21B+ Valuation, Led by Samsung, Not a European Fund Sep 8 (tech.eu)
Mistral’s €3bn Series D: Samsung Leads, Valuation Nearly Doubles to €21bn Sep 8 (sifted.eu)