# The Rundown: Everyone’s Suing OpenAI, Everyone’s Still Funding the Scrapers

By Rhea Rundown · 2026-07-09 · From the Editor · https://datacommenter.com/the-rundown-everyones-suing-openai-everyones-still-funding-the-scrapers/
_AI-assisted commentary, editorially reviewed. Quoted excerpts belong to the original outlet._

Today’s split screen is getting almost comedic: publishers are dragging OpenAI into sanctions territory over deleted logs, while the venture world keeps writing nine-figure checks to the same scraping infrastructure that makes those lawsuits inevitable. **Nobody involved in the money seems to be waiting for the courts to decide who’s right.**

Start with the legal front, because it’s the closest thing to a crisis this industry has. A 16-publisher coalition led by the Times says OpenAI hid its ability to search training data and may have destroyed 20 million ChatGPT logs — [now seeking sanctions](https://datacommenter.com/nyt-led-publishers-accuse-openai-of-hiding-evidence-seek-sanctions/) after a deposition blew up two years of claims that the logs were unsearchable, a story [laid out in granular detail here](https://datacommenter.com/nyt-accuses-openai-of-faking-inability-to-search-its-own-training-data/) and [pressed again by the Daily News and others](https://datacommenter.com/publishers-ask-judge-to-sanction-openai-over-deleted-chatgpt-logs/). If even a fraction of that holds up, it’s not a licensing dispute anymore, it’s a discovery-misconduct problem, and it should make every AI lab currently “negotiating” content deals nervous about what their own logs say.

That nervousness is spreading past the big mastheads. A Minnesota paper is publicly [cheering the litigation on](https://datacommenter.com/small-town-paper-cheers-on-ai-scraping-suits/), and the owner of the Greenfield Recorder has [filed its own suit](https://datacommenter.com/another-local-papers-owner-sues-over-ai-training-data/). This is no longer a coastal-newsroom grievance — it’s a rural-paper grievance too, which is the kind of broad-based plaintiff class that tends to actually move legislation, not just headlines.

And yet: capital doesn’t care. Warburg Pincus just handed Oxylabs $130 million, minting a [$3.6 billion scraping-infrastructure unicorn](https://datacommenter.com/oxylabs-becomes-a-3-6b-unicorn-lawsuits-and-all/) that Reddit has literally called a data “bank robber.” Bright Data, cut from the same web-scraping cloth, is now a strategic investor in a fincrime compliance startup’s [$20 million seed round](https://datacommenter.com/fincrime-startup-tangos-banks-20m-seed-with-bright-data-in-tow/). Read those two together and the message is blunt: the market has priced in the litigation risk and decided it’s a rounding error next to the value of the pipes.

Mercor’s week tells the same story from the labeling side. Its CEO [quietly funded, then bought](https://datacommenter.com/mercors-ceo-invested-in-deeptune-then-bought-it-he-says-that-was-always-the-plan/) a reinforcement-learning startup — a conflict of interest waved away as “the plan all along” — right as the company is reportedly [doubling its valuation to $20 billion](https://datacommenter.com/mercor-reportedly-doubling-its-valuation-to-20b-in-months/) in a matter of months. Consolidating the training-data pipeline while self-dealing your way into it isn’t a great look, but investors clearly don’t need a great look, just a growth curve.

Elsewhere, the picture is less fraught but no less telling. Databento’s [$97 million Series B](https://datacommenter.com/databento-raises-97-million-to-rewire-how-wall-street-buys-market-data/) is a bet that Wall Street’s market-data incumbents are expensive by design, not by necessity — a thesis I happen to agree with. DigitalOcean’s [nine-figure AI contracts and 10x RPO guidance](https://datacommenter.com/digitalocean-lands-nine-figure-ai-deals-talks-up-10x-rpo-surge/) show compute demand is still climbing regardless of how the data underneath it was sourced. And in Brussels, regulators [punted on social interoperability](https://datacommenter.com/eu-punts-on-social-media-interoperability-big-tech-wins-again/), proving once again that policy moves slower than either the lawsuits or the checkbooks.

Put it all together and the alt-data and training-data economy looks less like a market awaiting a legal verdict and more like one that’s already decided the verdict won’t matter much. Maybe it won’t. But someone’s going to be very surprised when a sanctions order lands on a company whose valuation assumed it never would.

*Watch tomorrow for whether the SDNY judge actually grants sanctions against OpenAI — that ruling could reset the price everyone’s paying for scraped content, unicorns included.*

#### Stories covered

- [Small-Town Paper Cheers On AI Scraping Suits](https://datacommenter.com/small-town-paper-cheers-on-ai-scraping-suits/) *(Licensing & Legal)*

- [Fincrime Startup Tangos Banks $20M Seed, With Bright Data In Tow](https://datacommenter.com/fincrime-startup-tangos-banks-20m-seed-with-bright-data-in-tow/) *(Deals & Funding)*

- [Mercor’s CEO Invested in Deeptune, Then Bought It. He Says That Was Always the Plan.](https://datacommenter.com/mercors-ceo-invested-in-deeptune-then-bought-it-he-says-that-was-always-the-plan/) *(Deals & Funding)*

- [DigitalOcean Lands Nine-Figure AI Deals, Talks Up 10x RPO Surge](https://datacommenter.com/digitalocean-lands-nine-figure-ai-deals-talks-up-10x-rpo-surge/) *(Deals & Funding)*

- [NYT-Led Publishers Accuse OpenAI of Hiding Evidence, Seek Sanctions](https://datacommenter.com/nyt-led-publishers-accuse-openai-of-hiding-evidence-seek-sanctions/) *(Licensing & Legal)*

- [Another Local Paper’s Owner Sues Over AI Training Data](https://datacommenter.com/another-local-papers-owner-sues-over-ai-training-data/) *(Licensing & Legal)*

- [Oxylabs Becomes a $3.6B Unicorn, Lawsuits and All](https://datacommenter.com/oxylabs-becomes-a-3-6b-unicorn-lawsuits-and-all/) *(Deals & Funding)*

- [Mercor Reportedly Doubling Its Valuation to $20B in Months](https://datacommenter.com/mercor-reportedly-doubling-its-valuation-to-20b-in-months/) *(Deals & Funding)*

- [NYT Accuses OpenAI of Faking Inability to Search Its Own Training Data](https://datacommenter.com/nyt-accuses-openai-of-faking-inability-to-search-its-own-training-data/) *(Licensing & Legal)*

- [EU Punts on Social Media Interoperability, Big Tech Wins Again](https://datacommenter.com/eu-punts-on-social-media-interoperability-big-tech-wins-again/) *(Licensing & Legal)*

- [Databento Raises $97 Million to Rewire How Wall Street Buys Market Data](https://datacommenter.com/databento-raises-97-million-to-rewire-how-wall-street-buys-market-data/) *(Deals & Funding)*

- [Publishers Ask Judge to Sanction OpenAI Over Deleted ChatGPT Logs](https://datacommenter.com/publishers-ask-judge-to-sanction-openai-over-deleted-chatgpt-logs/) *(Licensing & Legal)*

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Cite this analysis: https://datacommenter.com/the-rundown-everyones-suing-openai-everyones-still-funding-the-scrapers/
Need the underlying datasets (alt data, market data, AI training data)? Source licensed vendors via Brickroad: https://brickroad.network
More machine-readable access: https://datacommenter.com/llms.txt