What kinds of business records do AI companies license?
Short answer
Buyers license a firm's whole operating archive, not just one document type: quotes and estimates, orders, email and shared drives, work orders and logs, drawings and specs. Records that show real work from start to finish, with all the back-and-forth, are worth the most.
The short list
Buyers' published wish lists cover most of what a working firm produces:
| Kind of record | Examples |
|---|---|
| Sales and pricing | Rate quotes, estimates, bids, proposals, price lists, won and lost quotes |
| Orders and supply | Purchase orders, supplier records, catalogues, order history |
| Operations | Work orders, dispatch and shipping records, daily logs, schedules, claims |
| Quality and safety | QA and inspection logs, maintenance records, SOPs, checklists, incident reports |
| Projects | RFIs, submittals, change orders, meeting minutes, closeout documents |
| Technical | Drawings, CAD and BIM models, calculations, specifications, revision history |
| Everyday work | The firm's own email, shared drives and internal documents |
What makes an archive valuable
- Whole stories, not fragments. A quote, the emails around it, the order, the job record and the invoice together show how a piece of work happened. Isolated files are worth less.
- History. Revisions, drafts and change orders show how decisions were made. Many firms think of these as clutter, but buyers value them.
- Years. Ten years of records show seasons, market shifts and how the firm changed.
- Original formats. Native files (spreadsheets, CAD, email archives, database exports) beat PDFs, and PDFs beat scans.
- Professional judgment. Records where skilled people make calls, such as estimators pricing jobs, dispatchers rerouting loads or engineers checking designs, are what AI developers most want to learn from.
What usually stays out
- Client-owned deliverables, and anything under a client confidentiality clause.
- Government contract work with data-rights clauses, and export-controlled designs (ITAR/EAR).
- Records that are mostly personal information: HR files, payroll, medical, customer personal data.
- Documents you didn't create: supplier catalogs, purchased standards, other firms' drawings.
How to describe yours
To find out whether your archive fits, nobody needs your files. A few lines are enough: what kind of firm, staff now and at peak, how many years, which of the record types above you have, and roughly where they live (a file server, a TMS or ERP system, email, boxes).
Quick questions
Do buyers want paper records?
Mostly not. Buyers look for digital records in their original formats. Paper archives are rarely worth the cost of scanning unless they are unusually large or rare.
Does messy data count?
Yes. Real records are messy, and that's partly the point. Drafts, revisions and long email threads show how work actually gets done.
Is my email archive valuable?
It can be one of the most valuable parts, because it shows decisions being made. It is also the part with the most personal information, so it needs the most careful cleaning, or it stays out.
Want an honest read on your own records?
Describe what you have in a few lines. I'll tell you whether buyers look for it. No files needed.
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