Who controls de-identification is worth money
In the same Spirit auction round Mercor offered $5.2M with third-party de-identification or $7.0M if it could de-identify with its own tools, and later $10.0M on in-house terms; the debtors chose the lower third-party bids, saying privacy factors may be outcome-determinative.
Dated 13 Sep 2026Source checked 11 Oct 2026Quote found on its page again 17 Oct 2026Basis: strong
In the source's own words
“Mercor.io submitted the first overbid, offering either $5.2 million using Google's form bill of sale or $7 million if the terms allowed it to complete the deidentification process with its own tools. The Debtors determined that $5.2 million "was the highest bid for that round despite the lower price."”
Where it was read
Also read from the same source
- A bankrupt airline's entire corporate archive (Spirit Airlines)
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal records (Microsoft 365 email, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, employee records), Google's opening auction bid
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal records, Mercor's later bid conditioned on in-house de-identification
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal records, Mercor's first-round alternative conditioned on de-identifying with its own tools
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal records, Mercor's first overbid on Google's terms (third-party de-identification)
- Consumer privacy ombudsman (Lucy L. Thomson) and Google; Spirit Airlines: legal or policy, bankruptcy-estate corporate archive (de-identified enterprise data: email, Teams, files, tickets, code)
Figures it counts in
It is shown on its own, not counted into a figure.
Cited in these 7 guides
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