Twenty years of orders, drawings and invoices: AI labs buy that, even from a ten-person firm.

Manufacturers, machine shops, machine builders, engineering bureaus and distributors, often small and long-established: owners, managing directors and the people who run the office and the drawing vault.

5

buyers quoted below on what they want from companies like yours

6 of 8

kinds of record below that the valuation measures or values

1

lot like yours among those a lab buyer chose on 12 Oct 2026

What companies like yours hold

What you typically have, where it sits, and whether the valuation can measure or value it. Buyers price what exists together, over how many years, and how well it links.

  • Orders, quotes and inventory
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    ERP or order systems (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Infor, Odoo) or spreadsheets: requests for quote, orders, purchasing, stock and deliveries.
    How the valuation reads it
    Measured from a CSV or JSON export
  • Accounting
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    QuickBooks, Xero, Sage or NetSuite: invoices, payables and receivables over many years.
    How the valuation reads it
    Measured from your finance records exportCounted with finance records
  • Customer records
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    A CRM or customer database: who ordered what, when, and on what terms.
    How the valuation reads it
    Measured from your customer records exportCounted with customer records
  • CAD models and drawings
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    AutoCAD, SolidWorks PDM, Autodesk Vault or Onshape: parts, assemblies, revisions and toleranced drawings, often made for a customer's order.
    How the valuation reads it
    Describe it in your offer
  • Quality and maintenance records
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    Inspection and non-conformance reports with root cause; maintenance work orders with the technician's notes.
    How the valuation reads it
    Measured from a CSV or JSON export
  • Procedures and work instructions
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    SOPs, work instructions, checklists and spec sheets, with their revision history.
    How the valuation reads it
    Measured from your documents exportCounted with documents and knowledge
  • Machine programs
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    PLC code, CNC part programs and set-up sheets.
    How the valuation reads it
    Describe it in your offer
  • Order and contract email
    Where it sits, and what the evidence shows
    Years of mail with customers and suppliers about orders, specifications and terms.
    How the valuation reads it
    Measured from your email exportCounted with conversations

What buyers say they want from companies like you

In their own words, from their own pages or from reporting on what they bought. Each opens its source.

  • “Manufacturing Work orders, QA logs, spec sheets”
    MercorIts own page, 12 Oct 2026
  • “Inspection reports, equipment logs, technical specifications, claims files, pricing and catalog histories.”
    SuperAnnotateIts own page, 12 Oct 2026
  • “Examples of sources we buy AutoCAD Dropbox Figma Gmail Google Drive Outlook Monday.com NetSuite Notion Paychex Quickbooks ServiceTitan Slack +1K more”
    Handshake AIIts own page, 12 Oct 2026
  • “SOPs, knowledge bases, internal documentation, CRM data, project histories, and QA processes”
    micro1Its own page, 12 Oct 2026
  • “QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite and similar systems: invoices, estimates, AP and AR, and the transaction history behind them.”
    NyneIts own page, 12 Oct 2026
  • “Any industry qualifies. What matters is that the records are specific to your field and hard to source anywhere else.”
    SuperAnnotateIts own page, 12 Oct 2026

What raises the value

  • Long, continuous history in the same systems: "Value scales with your systems, team size, and years of history" (Troveo).
  • An order a buyer can follow end to end: quote, drawing, order, production, delivery, invoice, payment.
  • Native CAD files with their feature history, paired with the toleranced drawing and the reason for each revision.
  • Inspection and non-conformance records that link the defect, its root cause and the corrective action.
  • Work that is scarce in public: researchers say generating PLC code "poses unique challenges due to limited data in public training datasets" (arXiv 2410.22159).
  • Technicians' written diagnoses on maintenance work orders.

What lowers it

  • Neutral CAD exports with no feature tree, and standard catalogue parts.
  • Pass or fail flags with no measurements or notes, and maintenance checklists with ticks only.
  • Master data alone (part lists, price lists) without the transactions that used it.
  • Books rebuilt or migrated with the history lost.
  • Procedures copied from public standards.

A line that quotes a buyer names it. The others are our checklist, drawn from the factors buyers state in general: no buyer publishes how much each one moves a price. How often each factor matters across 156 kinds of data.

The rights to settle first

These stop a sale more often than price does. Each can be settled before any buyer sees a record.

The full rights checklist
  • Drawings made for a customer's order may belong to that customer. The lot a lab buyer chose on 12 October included CAD drawings of client orders; check each customer's contract and purchase conditions before a sale.
  • Supplier parts and licensed CAD libraries inside the vault are not yours to license.
  • Export control applies to aerospace, defence and some dual-use designs, wherever the buyer is.
  • Customer and supplier names, prices and bank details run through ERP and accounting records and have to come out or be cleared.
  • Manufacturers' service manuals and supplier documents referenced in your procedures belong to their publishers.
  • Export access is not a licence: "Your ability to export a record does not by itself establish permission to license it" (Nyne).

A recent purchase that fits

One of five lots a lab buyer went for on 12 Oct 2026, wanting to close in under a week. No price was given.

All five lots
Seller
Industrial parts manufacturer
People
10
History
20+ years in business
Size
About 500 GB
What was inside
  • 11 years of CRM, accounting, inventory and orders
  • CAD drawings of client orders
  • Contract email

Source: A buyer-side referral network's announcement to its members, 12 October 2026 (reported to us).

What is already on offer from companies like you

Read this morning from the brokers' and marketplaces' own catalogues. A buyer compares your records with these; settled rights, more years and more linked systems are what set one apart.

Every lot on offer

23

lots on offer like yours

9 years

of history in the middle of them

7 of 22

say the rights are settled

What holders like you ask

We have ten people. Are we too small?
Not necessarily. Of the 24 buyers on our board that take company records, 5 publish a minimum head count, from 20 to 40 people. The rest publish none, and SuperAnnotate says "Any industry qualifies. What matters is that the records are specific to your field and hard to source anywhere else." On 12 October a lab buyer chose the archive of an industrial parts manufacturer with 10 staff and more than 20 years in business. What that lot had was years: 11 years of CRM, accounting, inventory and orders.
Are CAD drawings worth anything?
Handshake AI lists AutoCAD among the sources it buys, and the manufacturer's lot chosen on 12 October included CAD drawings of client orders. Public CAD research sets are small, and one of the main ones is licensed for non-commercial use only. Native files with their feature history and the matching drawing say more than neutral exports. We have found no public price for CAD files on their own: they sell inside a company's archive.
Our records sit in an old ERP and in spreadsheets. Is that a problem?
Not in itself. Buyers name the systems where orders and invoices live (Scale AI lists SAP; Nyne names QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite), and what they look for is the complete flow, from request to payment, over many years. The valuation reads CSV exports of tickets, customer and accounting records on your own computer and counts records, years and links without sending the rows.
Who owns the drawings we made for customers?
Often the customer, by contract or by its purchase conditions. An employee cannot license an employer's records, and work written for a client often belongs to the client, depending on the contract. Settle it customer by customer, or leave those files out: the rest of the archive can still be sold.
What would a buyer do with a manufacturer's records?
Build practice environments in which AI agents do real office and engineering work, scored on the result. Epoch AI's interviews found "significant growth in enterprise workflows: tasks like navigating Salesforce, filing reports, or manipulating spreadsheets" (12 Jan 2026), and Mercor names manufacturing work orders, QA logs and spec sheets on its own page.

In this topic

What sells

  1. Start hereWhich data do AI labs want, and who holds it?Each kind of data the market prices, the businesses that hold it, what labs are asking for now and what they turn away.
  2. GuideWhat Are RL Environments? Who Builds, Buys and Prices ThemAn RL environment is a sandbox where an AI agent attempts tasks with tools and a verifier scores each try. Who builds them, who buys them and what they cost.
  3. GuideHow to Sell Videos to AI Companies: Prices, Buyers and RightsAI companies license video by the hour or minute. What buyers pay, which footage sells, and the rights you need in every frame before you sell a library.
  4. PageWhere data comes fromWho holds each kind of data, how much exists and how it reaches buyers.
  5. RegisterCompanies closingCompanies closing, sold or gone dark, and the records they leave.

See what your orders, books and records show, measured on your own computer. Drawings you describe.

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