Today I read a Bloomberg article (see here) that reported that SpaceX had discussed buying customer and operational data from struggling or failed start-ups. This is the second time I’ve seen a notable company consider buying or make an offer for data from struggling companies: A few months ago, Google offered $10 million for Spirit Airlines’ data after the company filed for bankruptcy.

In the world of AI, especially physical AI, it’s becoming clear that the right kind of data is valuable because it can be used to train AI. The SpaceX and Google moves confirm that companies, some struggling and left for dead, could be sitting on valuable and ignored assets. For public companies, this is more interesting because that data likely doesn’t show up as a balance-sheet asset.

I think private-market investors are ahead of the curve on this right now. But when public-market investors start thinking about this more and quantify the value of the data that some (not all) public companies have, that could have a material impact on the valuation of the few companies that have large, unique, proprietary data sets.