Why focus on data over data centers?

In the midst of heightened political attention on data centers, the AI industry is increasingly focused on the vast amounts of data being collected to train models. Google recently paid $10 million for Spirit Airlines’ business data archive, which includes 100 million employee emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, and 30 million lines of source code. This data is intended to help train AI models to understand business operations and solve complex problems. As AI agents become more capable, companies are seeking real-world business data, creating a growing market for licensed data. Alex Kimata, a data privacy attorney, notes that such data sets are highly valuable, and while $10 million is significant in bankruptcy proceedings, it is relatively minor for a company like Google. This trend suggests more AI firms may pursue similar deals in the near future.