Checked October 11, 2026
Companies that buy data for AI
These companies that buy data pay owners for it, then license it to AI labs and app builders. Here is what each one buys, who it buys from and how it pays, from their own sites.
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FileYield
Want buyers to come to you? List your dataset on FileYield for free, keep the files in-house, and negotiate price and license directly with AI buyers.
- Free to list
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- AI listing assistant
- Buyer outreach
The board
14 companies that buy data
These companies that buy data either license it from businesses and rights holders or run the network that pays them. How each one pays is shown as published.
What they want
The data buyers pay for
micro1's data partnerships page is unusually specific about what it licenses from companies: operational documentation like SOPs, knowledge bases, CRM data, project histories and QA processes, plus how teams make decisions and human feedback on AI outputs.
Other companies that buy data specialize. Protege works with healthcare and media data owners. Troveo licenses unpublished video, audio and games. Created by Humans licenses books, and Calliope licenses film, TV and YouTube video.
The Information reported in July 2026 that data startups were paying HVAC companies $150,000 for data, a sign that ordinary business records now have buyers.
Best for: Companies with operational data: SOPs, CRM records, project histories
- Pays for operational data
- Scope and redaction agreed first
- $500M gross run rate (reported)
micro1 is a data lab that makes expert human data, RL environments and evaluations for frontier AI labs. Its data partnerships program licenses companies' operational data, such as SOPs, knowledge bases, CRM data, project histories and QA processes. The data scope, anonymization and internal approvals are agreed before anything is shared. TechCrunch reported in August 2026 that micro1 reached a $500 million gross run rate.
Data buyers
Best for: Companies with datasets to license: records, audio, images, video, documents
- Free to list
- No file upload needed
- Buyer outreach
- 2,566 data types
FileYield is a marketplace where organizations describe datasets they could license, get found by AI buyers and negotiate directly. Listing is free, takes about two minutes with an AI listing assistant and needs no file upload, so the data stays in your systems. FileYield can also run targeted outreach to buyer categories when an approved listing matches a need. Price, license type, exclusivity and delivery are agreed between buyer and seller.
Best for: Healthcare and media data owners
- $25M Series A, Aug 2025
- 100+ data partners
Protege licenses proprietary real-world data, mostly clinical, imaging and media, from data owners to AI developers. It raised a $25 million Series A in August 2025 and says it has 100+ data partners and has generated tens of millions in revenue for them.
Best for: Companies and creators with unpublished video, audio or games
- 8M+ hours of video
- 1,000+ game titles
Troveo licenses non-public video, audio and gaming data from companies and creators to AI labs. It lists 350+ company datasets, more than 8 million hours of video and 4 million hours of audio in its library. Payout terms aren't published.
Best for: YouTube creators and film and TV rights holders
- Non-exclusive training licenses
- 35,000+ hours of film and TV
Calliope licenses film, TV and YouTube video to AI companies for training. Its licenses are non-exclusive and exclude exhibition rights. Creators are paid a revenue share by a formula based on volume and subscriber count; the percentage isn't published.
Best for: Authors and book rights holders
- Authors Guild partner
- Launched Jan 2025
Created by Humans licenses books to AI companies, bundling training, reference and transformative rights under one agreement. It launched in January 2025 as an official AI licensing partner of the Authors Guild. Its split isn't published.
Best for: Creators, publishers and rights holders
- Acquired by Cloudflare, Jan 2026
Human Native brokered licensed text, image, video and audio between rights holders and AI developers. Cloudflare announced it acquired the company in January 2026, with terms not disclosed, as part of its content offering to AI companies.
Publisher licensing networks
Best for: Publishers and website owners
- Bot paywall
- Summary or full-display licenses
TollBit sits between a publisher's site and AI bots, serving bots separately and letting AI companies license pages for summaries or full display. Its own site promises usage-based pricing on the publisher's terms. A News Media Help Desk guide reports that publishers set a rate per 1,000 pages and pay no upfront or monthly fee.
Best for: Publishers and media companies with live content feeds
- Agent storefront
- Ads inside AI answers
Dappier sells publishers' content to AI agents and apps through priced APIs, and runs ads inside AI answers. Its agent storefront lists publisher APIs such as Benzinga and WISH-TV. TechCrunch reported in 2024 that publishers can price content per query, much like a CPM rate.
Best for: Website owners already on Cloudflare
- Allow, charge or block each crawler
- Private beta
Cloudflare lets site owners allow, charge or block each AI crawler and set a flat price per request. Cloudflare acts as merchant of record: it bills the crawler operator and pays the earnings to the site owner. It's in private beta, and Cloudflare's own cut isn't published.
Best for: News and magazine publishers
- Copilot and Yahoo as buyers
- AP, Condé Nast, Vox Media
Microsoft Advertising's marketplace lets publishers set terms for AI builders that use their content to ground AI answers, with Microsoft Copilot and Yahoo named as early buyers. Microsoft says publishers are paid on delivered value and get usage reports. Named publishers include the Associated Press, Condé Nast and Vox Media.
Best for: Online publishers, platforms and licensing agencies
- Nonprofit
- Reddit, Medium, Stack Overflow
RSL Collective is a nonprofit that pools publishers' content and licenses it to AI companies under the RSL Standard, collecting royalties each time a work feeds an AI output. Joining is free. Named members and supporters include Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, Stack Overflow and MIT Press. Royalty rates aren't published.
Best for: Publishers and rightsholders of articles, books and research
- AI Systems Training License
- Non-exclusive
Copyright Clearance Center offers voluntary, non-exclusive collective licenses for AI uses of copyrighted content, including an AI Systems Training License for companies building AI. Participating rightsholders, mostly publishers, receive royalties for use of their works.
Best for: News publishers and content creators
- 1,000+ publications
- 50/50 ad revenue
ProRata builds attribution technology and the Gist AI search and ad products, and shares the resulting ad revenue 50/50 with participating publishers, split by contribution. It says 1,000+ publications and creators have signed on.
Prefer to list and let buyers come to you? Compare the AI data marketplace options or see every way to sell data to AI companies.
Questions
Common questions
Which companies buy data from businesses?
micro1's data partnerships program licenses operational data such as SOPs, CRM data and project histories. Protege licenses healthcare and media data, and Troveo licenses unpublished video, audio and games. FileYield lets businesses list data and negotiate directly with AI buyers.
How do data buyers pay?
It depends on the buyer. Publisher networks pay per use: Cloudflare per crawl request, Dappier per query, RSL Collective per AI output. ProRata splits ad revenue 50/50. Most data buyers, including micro1, Protege and Troveo, set terms in each agreement and don't publish rates.
Is it safe to sell company data to AI buyers?
It can be, if the scope is tight. micro1, for example, agrees on approved data, security standards, anonymization and internal approvals before anything is shared. Remove personal data you can't license and get legal review of the agreement.
Sources
- micro1: data partnerships
- micro1 newsroom
- Protege Series A (Aug 2025)
- Troveo
- Calliope Networks
- Created by Humans
- Cloudflare acquires Human Native (Jan 2026)
- News Media Help Desk: TollBit guide
- TechCrunch: Dappier (2024)
- Cloudflare: pay per crawl
- Microsoft Publisher Content Marketplace
- RSL Collective
- Copyright Clearance Center: AI licensing
- Gist Answers (ProRata)
Checked October 11, 2026. Prices, programs and job postings change, so confirm on each page.