"Is My Messenger Chat Training AI?" U.S. Sees Surge in Corporate Data Trading

[Financial News] AI companies that need data containing human interactions for artificial intelligence training are now buying messenger chats, emails and meeting materials from other companies. They have already absorbed most of the information available on the internet.
On the 13th local time, The Information, a U.S. tech publication, said that after interviewing about 20 people, including founders, data brokers and financial advisers, demand for corporate data such as internal messenger chats, emails, video conference recordings and code change histories has surged in recent months. According to sources, AI model developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic have hit the limits of collecting publicly available internet data, so they are using intermediaries to buy relevant materials for AI training. Demand for such corporate data has also risen sharply as AI agents increasingly take over human tasks such as customer service, clinical trial management and invoice verification.
Bobby Samuels, CEO of U.S. data brokerage startup Protege, said the company’s total transaction volume has jumped from $30 million last year to at least $100 million this year as demand has recently increased. He emphasized, "AI labs have already scraped the entire internet. What they want now is real interaction between people."
The Information noted that in the AI training data market, popular items include emails showing how developers solve problems, earnings-related conversations discussed by chief financial officers on conference calls, and millions of hours of software demonstration videos. Buyers remove personally identifiable information before selling the data to AI model training companies, and most transactions are not disclosed.
In fact, after AI startup Wormly agreed in late June to be acquired by customer management and marketing software company HubSpot, it received multiple offers to buy its codebase and employee communication records for as much as $300,000. Buyers showed strong interest in routine workplace materials such as internal meeting transcripts, emails and messenger chats that were not included in the acquisition price.
Maximus Greenwald, CEO of Wormly, said he received four such offers but turned them all down. HubSpot also said in connection with the acquisition of Wormly that "the deal was for talent, and no data was included in the acquisition."
[email protected] Park Jong-won Reporter