Sell data to AI companies: how licensing your company records works

What AI companies license from a business

AI companies license the records that show how your team handles work: email, team chat, CRM history, support tickets, documents and project tools. Each buyer names the systems it takes on its own page.

Handshake AI describes what it wants as "documents, communications, and records of business processes." Turing's Project Lazarus takes records from any company "with a real operating history," including ones that have closed.

The valuable record is the whole chain: the request, what your team did and the result. A contact list on its own is not what these buyers describe. Mercor says "connecting more tools generally results in a higher payout," so list every system your team uses before the first call.

How licensing company data works, in five steps

Licensing your company data to AI buyers takes five steps, and your team spends about an hour with me before any buyer call.

1. Fit check. You tell me your headcount, years in business and the systems you use, online or on a 30-minute call. Your team then screenshots record counts from your admin dashboards. Nothing is uploaded.
2. Written OK. I tell you in writing which buyers fit and what each one pays me. You approve the list, strike any buyer and name your exclusions. Nothing goes to any buyer before your reply.
3. Same-day introductions. I submit you through each approved buyer's public referral program on the same day.
4. Buyer calls and offers. Each buyer talks to you directly and may ask for a sample before it prices anything. Buyers move at different speeds, and not every buyer makes an offer. Offers come to you, and I lay any offers side by side.
5. Sign with the buyer. You sign directly with the buyer you pick, or with none. After you sign, the buyer's engineers extract and de-identify the agreed records with your IT lead. De-identification means replacing names and anything else that points to a person. The buyer pays you on the schedule in your contract.

Topology Partners never receives, scopes, de-identifies or moves your records. Your contract is with the buyer, so start by checking which systems you could include.

What stays out of an AI data license

Passwords, API keys, payment data, health records, HR files and anything your customer contracts restrict stay out of every license.

• Credentials. Passwords, API keys and system access you have not approved.
• Payment data. Card numbers, bank details and payment fields.
• Health records. Topology Partners does not introduce anyone holding patient health data.
• HR and personnel files. Reviews, pay records and government IDs.
• Contract-restricted records. Anything a customer or vendor contract limits you from sharing.

Scale AI says employee and customer identities, raw systems and credentials never leave your environment. micro1 says personal information is removed when relevant and data is deleted under the agreed retention terms. Ask each buyer to describe its de-identification process in writing.

You can also exclude named customers, competitors, folders or whole systems. Pass those exclusions to each buyer and write them into your contract. Your lawyer decides what your contracts allow; our checklist for counsel lists what they will check.

What you sign: scope, permitted uses, term and payment

Your license contract with the buyer sets which records it may use, for what, for how long and when you are paid.

• Scope. The systems, folders, date ranges and record types the buyer may take, plus your exclusions.
• Permitted uses. Training a model, fine-tuning one for a specific job, or generating synthetic examples. List the ones you allow and ban resale of your records.
• Term and deletion. When the buyer must delete the raw records, with a deletion certificate. Models trained during the term stay trained.
• Payment. Mercor says it pays by wire on delivery of the anonymized dataset, typically 2 to 4 weeks after signing. micro1 says it pays in full within 30 days of acceptance.

Have your lawyer read the contract before you sign, and compare these four terms across any offers.

Referral attribution rules, and why we ask you not to fill in buyer forms separately

Each buyer credits a referral only to whoever makes first contact, so a form you fill in yourself can cancel the referral. These are the buyers' own rules, read 2026-10-25.

• micro1 credits a referral only if your company registers through the referral link. If your company "has already registered independently," micro1 says attribution "cannot be manually or retroactively changed."
• Scale AI says "only one referral is paid out per deal based on who successfully intros Scale to the right stakeholder." It pays the first introducer only.
• Handshake AI says the referrer "must be the first to introduce the company."
• Mercor says "the first valid referral for a company counts."

These rules decide who receives the referral fee. The buyer pays that fee separately, and nothing is deducted from your contract. Please reply to each buyer from the thread I start, and do not apply on its website as well.

If you have already applied to or spoken with a buyer, tell me. I leave that buyer off your list and introduce you to the others.

Company data licensing compared with consumer data apps

Licensing company data covers your business's own operating records, under a contract between your company and a named buyer. Consumer apps that pay individuals for their browsing or shopping data are a separate market. Topology Partners does not handle personal data resale. If a record is mainly about a private person rather than your team's work, it belongs on the exclusion list.