Lawmakers push Google to halt $10M Spirit Airlines data deal

A group of 114 U.S. lawmakers sent a formal letter urging Alphabet subsidiary Google and Spirit Airlines to halt or narrow a 10 million dollar acquisition of the carrier's internal corporate data. Google won an auction for the digital assets in August 2026, outbidding Mercor, which offered 7.5 million dollars.

The transaction includes 100 million internal employee emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, 17 million OneDrive files, and 20 million SharePoint items. It also encompasses 516 custom software code repositories containing 30 million lines of code. The deal excludes 97 million Spirit Airlines customer records.

Lawmakers voiced concern over using corporate operational and workforce data to train artificial intelligence models. Spirit Airlines employed 9,700 full-time workers prior to its liquidation, and a union objection represents 700 former pilots who oppose the transfer of personal workplace communications.