QualifyDataQualifyDataYes — a company can license its business records to AI companies and get paid for them. The company grants a license to use a cleaned copy of its records for a set term, the names and identifiers are taken out before any developer sees a line, the company keeps its originals, and the license fee is paid by the AI company it signs with. This guide walks through the whole thing: what buyers pay for, what an archive is worth, who qualifies, what stays private, and the steps from the first call to payment.
Most owners have never heard of this program, so we will not assume anything. Each section below answers one question in plain language, and each one opens with the direct answer. Where a number appears, it is labeled — a published fit standard, a program's typical timeline, or a case study from an AI lab. Nobody can tell you what your archive is worth before the intake process runs, and anyone who quotes you a number up front is guessing.
Five minutes. See if your archive qualifies.No cost. No commitment. No logins, no records handed over — just a few questions about the size of your archive.
It means you give an AI company permission to use a copy of your records for a set period of time, for a stated purpose, in exchange for a license fee. It is a license, not a sale. Your originals stay exactly where they are, you keep running your business on them, and when the term ends, the permission ends with it.
The copy that gets licensed is not the raw thing. Before any AI developer sees a single line, the records are cleaned: names, email addresses, phone numbers and street addresses are replaced (a person becomes "Person 01"), dates are generalized, and card numbers, bank numbers and anything about minors are left out entirely. What the developer studies is the shape of the work — how a job came in, how it moved through your team, how it got finished — without the identities attached to it.
Two things are worth saying plainly. First, the license is a written agreement that you and your attorney review before you sign it, and it lists exactly which systems and which years are in and which are out. Second, you sign that license directly with the AI company that made the offer — not with us. Our job is to get your archive in front of the buyers and bring you the best offer. The signature at the end is yours.
They buy the records that show how real work got done. An AI system that has only read the internet can write about a business. A system that has studied thousands of real companies' working records has seen how a business actually runs — the back-and-forth, the judgment calls, the problems and the fixes. That trail of ordinary work is the asset, and it is made of the systems your team already uses every day.
| Source | What it shows | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| How work was discussed, decided and followed up | The largest single record of how the company thought | |
| Team chat | The fast, informal back-and-forth inside the team | Real communication as it happens, not polished afterward |
| Documents and spreadsheets | Proposals, plans, trackers, reports | How work was organized and measured |
| CRM history | How customers were won, served and kept | Sales and service as a process, start to finish |
| Support tickets | Problems arriving, being worked, being solved | Complete stories with a beginning and an end |
| Project tools | Work broken into tasks and moved to done | How teams plan and execute |
| Accounting records | Invoices, bills, payments, the real flow of money | How the business was actually operated |
| HR and payroll records | Hiring, scheduling, pay, day-to-day people operations | The back office that every company runs |
| Databases | The structured records underneath everything else | Depth that ties the other sources together |
Not every company has every source, and no company needs all nine. What matters most is how many different sources the work ran through — and what kind of data they hold.
That is why the same archive can look very different from two owners' chairs. A company whose work lives in email alone has a thin record of itself. A company whose work ran through email, chat, a CRM, tickets and accounting has a thick one — five views of the same work, each confirming the others. Buyers pay for thickness. If you are wondering where your own company stands, the estimator starts with exactly that question: how many sources, and what kind.
The buyers are AI companies — the labs building and training AI systems — and the data companies that supply them. They buy because training an AI on real business operations requires real business operations, and those records cannot be invented. They have to come from companies that actually did the work.
Think about what a support ticket archive teaches that a textbook cannot. The textbook says what a good resolution looks like. Ten thousand real tickets show what customers actually complain about, in their own words, and how real teams actually responded — including the messy middle where nobody knew the answer yet. That difference between the textbook and the reality is the whole value of the archive, and it is why the buyers pay owners instead of writing the material themselves.
QualifyData works with 15 AI companies. That number matters for a simple reason: if you take your archive to one buyer, you get one number — theirs. When your archive is put in front of 15 and they bid, the number you see is the best one the market put up. The next section covers what that number is based on.
Three things set the price, and they are not equal. How many different sources the work ran through, and what kind of data they hold, matters most — that is the depth of the archive. Next comes how many people worked at desks (now, or at peak for a company that has closed), because desk staff are the ones who created the records. Then how many years of records the company kept. Depth first, then people, then years.
There is no honest way to turn that into a price before the buyers see the shape of the archive, and we do not try. What we can show you is what buyers have actually paid. These are case studies from AI labs — real examples from the market, labeled as examples and nothing more:
Published deals, and buyer ranges shown at the sizes we qualify — examples of what archives have sold for, not a promise of what yours is worth. Your number only exists as a written offer after the intake call. Figures checked November 2026.
The estimator will give you a rough range from the three drivers — desk staff, years, and systems — so you can see where your archive roughly stands before you spend any real time on this. Then the honest sequence is the one the process follows: the intake call maps your archive system by system, the buyers bid, and the best offer arrives in writing. That written offer is the first real number, and it is the only one anyone should ask you to decide on.
Five minutes. See if your archive qualifies.The general fit is a business that has run for 3 or more years, with 20 or more people working at desks, in the US, Canada, the UK or Australia. In healthcare and dental, law, accounting and tax, and finance, as few as 10 desk staff can be enough, because the records in those fields are dense. Five or more software systems in the stack is a strong archive. The AI companies make the final call on fit — the standards below are the published shape of it.
| The standard | The general shape |
|---|---|
| Where | US, Canada, UK or Australia |
| Years running | 3 or more years of records |
| People at desks | 20 or more, working at desks |
| Regulated fields | As few as 10 desk staff in healthcare and dental, law, accounting and tax, and finance |
| Systems | The ordinary stack — email, documents, chat, CRM, project tools, accounting, HR, databases. 5 or more is strong. |
The fit also has an industry shape, because the archive of a dental practice looks nothing like the archive of a call center. We have written the version of this guide for the fields where archives run deepest: software and SaaS companies, dental practices, escrow and title firms, insurance agencies, mortgage and lending offices, IT services and MSPs, and call centers. If your field is on that list, start there — it covers the systems, the fit and the privacy handling specific to your records.
Your originals never move and never change. What gets licensed is a copy, and that copy goes through a cleaning process before any developer sees it. Here is the sequence, in order.
First, you choose what is in. You pick which systems and which years are part of the license. A system you leave out stays out — entirely. The license lists exactly what goes, in writing, before anything is exported.
Second, your team exports a copy. Typically 5 to 10 business days, with help through every step. The copy goes to the AI company you signed with — to its cleaning process. That cleaning process is the only place that ever sees the raw copy.
Third, the identifiers come out. Names, email addresses, phone numbers and street addresses are replaced — a person becomes "Person 01." Dates are generalized. Card numbers, bank numbers and anything about minors are not generalized; they are removed entirely.
Fourth, medical records get a stricter path. For practices, patient identifiers are removed by a privacy partner working under a business associate agreement, and the de-identification is certified by a qualified expert. The AI partner receives de-identified data only, and it does not re-identify it.
Fifth, you can see a cleaned sample. Before the process is final, you can ask to see what the cleaned version looks like — the same view a developer would get. Most owners who worry about this step stop worrying at the sample.
Last, the raw copy is deleted. The un-cleaned copy is destroyed on a schedule set in your license. What remains with the buyer is the cleaned version, licensed for the term you agreed to.
Seven steps, and your part in them is two calls, a signature when the offer is right, and an export your team runs with help. Everything between is ours. No step requires you to hand over a login, and no step shows anyone your records — until you have signed a license and your own team exports the copy.
We follow one job through your systems and answer your questions. No data, no logins, no commitment.
A client services agreement lets us represent you. It doesn't commit you to a deal, and your attorney is welcome on a call first.
60 to 90 minutes. Your team shares a screen or fills in a sizing sheet — system by system, how far back, how much. We see counts and sizes only. No records, and nobody gets a login.
That list — with no actual records in it — goes out through our broker network to 15 AI companies. They bid. We compare the bids and submit the best one to you, in writing.
You and your attorney review the terms, and you sign directly with the AI company behind that offer.
Your team exports copies, with help through every step — typically 5 to 10 business days. The buyer then checks the export against the list, a review of about 30 days.
The AI company pays you the license fee directly.
From signing to money in the bank is typically 90 to 120 days. Timelines are typical, not promised — and no offer is guaranteed.
Start with the simplest fact on this page: we never touch or access your data. Not during the intake, not during the export, not ever. The intake covers counts and sizes only. Your records go straight from your systems to the AI company you sign with — we are never in that chain, and nobody on our side ever holds a login to anything of yours.
Then the control you keep, from the first minute:
One question owners always ask sits underneath all of this: is it legal for my company to do this? That is a decision for your own attorney, and we don't advise on it. What we can tell you is how the process is built — owners license records their own company created, your attorney reviews every document before you sign anything, and if your counsel says no, that is the answer.
That is a real choice, and the honest version is short. Going direct means one buyer sees your archive and gives you one number, take it or leave it — and if you want a second number, you run the whole process again: the calls, the intake, the sorting, once per company. A broker runs it once and puts the archive in front of 15 companies. They bid, we compare the bids, and we submit the best offer to you. You don't pick among offers and you don't sort through bids — that work is ours.
Either way, you sign the license directly with the AI company, you keep your originals, and your business never pays anything. We wrote the full comparison — who does the work, who sees the archive, what each route costs you in time — on its own page: going direct vs. using a broker.
Yes. A closed company's archive is a finished asset, and it is measured as it was — at its peak, in its final stretch of real operation: the desk staff it had, the years of records it built, the systems it ran on. The records usually still exist, in cloud accounts, old servers, or a custodian's storage, and somebody is usually still paying to keep them. Licensing turns that carrying cost into a final check.
There is one deadline that matters, and it is not a legal one: accounts lapse. When the email host, the CRM or the cloud plan gets cancelled, the provider eventually deletes what was inside, and once the records are gone, every option that depended on them is gone too. So the order is license first, cancel after. We wrote two pages for closed companies specifically: the closed companies page, and a full walk-through of what happens to business records when a company closes — retention periods, who is responsible, who can sign, and what to do first.
Five minutes. See if your archive qualifies.The estimator asks about the company as it was — desk staff at peak, years of records, the systems it ran on.
Run the five-minute check. It asks the three questions this whole guide comes down to: how many people worked at desks, how many years of records you kept, and how many systems the work ran through — and what kind of data they hold. It returns a rough range and a straight read on fit. It costs nothing, it commits you to nothing, and no records change hands.
After the check, the order is the process itself: the intro call if you want to go further, your attorney welcome at every step, and the first number you will ever be asked to decide on arrives in writing, after the intake. If the answer at any point is that your archive is not a fit, you will hear that plainly too.
Five minutes. See if your archive qualifies.No cost. No commitment. No logins, no records handed over.
It depends on three things: how many different sources the work ran through and what kind of data they hold, how many people worked at desks — now or at peak — and how many years of records you kept. Case studies from AI labs run from $150K to $550K, and higher for large archives. Your own number only exists as a written offer after the intake call. The estimator gives you the rough range first.
The records that show how real work got done: email, team chat, documents and spreadsheets, CRM history, support tickets, project files, accounting records, HR and payroll records, and databases. How many different sources the work ran through is what drives the value most.
AI companies that train models on how real businesses operate, and the data companies that supply them. QualifyData works with 15 of them. Instead of taking one buyer's number, your archive is put in front of all of them and they bid.
No. You license a cleaned copy of your records for a set term. Your originals stay yours, you keep using them, and the license has an end date. It is a license, not a sale.
The cleaned data itself carries no names — identifiers are replaced before any developer sees it, and buyers typically agree not to name you publicly. The AI company you sign the license with knows who it signed with, because the agreement is between you and them. Everyone downstream of that sees the work, not the company.
Never. We never touch or access your data — not during the intake, not during the export, not ever. The intake covers counts and sizes only. Your records go straight from your systems to the AI company you sign with.
What a buyer can and cannot do with the cleaned copy is set by the license you sign — the term, the purpose and the limits are in that agreement, and your attorney reviews it before you sign anything. If a term is not one you can live with, that is the time to say so, and nothing moves until the license is right.
That is a decision for your own attorney, and we don't advise on it. What we can tell you is how the process is built: owners license records their own company created, identifiers are removed before any developer sees a line, and your attorney reviews every document before you sign anything.
Companies with fewer than about 20 people working at desks, fewer than 3 years of records, or work that left almost nothing in writing. Staffing firms, defense work, cannabis, and franchise locations are also not a fit for this program. Some fields qualify smaller — healthcare and dental, law, accounting and tax, and finance can fit at 10 or more desk staff.
Yes. Case studies from AI labs show company archives licensed at $550K, $250K and $150K and above. Those are examples of what buyers have paid for company records — not a promise of what your archive is worth. Your number only exists as a written offer after the intake call.
We never touch or access your data. Not during the intake, not during the export, not ever. Your records go straight from your systems to the AI company you sign with — we are never in that chain.
And your business never pays anything.
This guide reflects the program's published fit standards, process and case studies, checked November 2026.