I came across a story that made me rethink what "shutting down" a startup actually means now.
A founder wound down his crypto startup this year, figuring the data wasn't worth much. Anonymous users, only a few years of history. Instead, he walked away with roughly $25,000 just for the code base, with more likely coming for the data itself. AI labs are apparently buying up these digital archives from failed startups to train their models.
What strikes me isn't the dollar amount, it's the shift in mindset this requires. As someone who's spent years building and maintaining web systems before moving toward AI work, I used to think of a dead product's data as liability: something to delete responsibly, not an asset to shop around. Now it seems like the calculus has flipped for some founders.
It also raises real questions I don't think we've settled as an industry. Who actually owns that data once a company folds? What did users agree to when they signed up for a niche app, versus what it's now being used for?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/10/13/1145755/ai-labs-buying-data-from-dead-startups-to-train-models/ #AI #DataPrivacy #Startups