SpaceX's AI arm has internally reviewed ways to buy customer information and operating data from a bankrupt startup and use it to train Grok, a report said. The discussions are still informal and may not lead to an actual transaction, it added.

Decrypt, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Sept. 17 that the review is being led by SpaceXAI, launched in February after SpaceX and xAI integrated. Rather than securing permission from operating companies to use their data, the organisation is focusing on digital assets from defunct startups with no party left to voice objections. The target includes not only customer files but also various records accumulated during business operations.

The main aim is seen as securing data to train Grok. AI models improve performance based on training data such as text, code and work records, but the cost of obtaining real corporate data is rising compared with public web data. In this situation, records from bankrupt companies are being regarded as a relatively inexpensive resource.

There is a similar precedent. Google won internal records of low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines, which shut down operations this year, for $10 million at a bankruptcy auction. The assets included about 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages and employee files spanning decades, and the data was set to enter an AI training system.

But this approach immediately raises issues of personal information and consent. In the Spirit Airlines case, a flight attendants' union filed an objection with the bankruptcy court. The union argued that de-identification by deleting names alone would not make it difficult to identify again who said what in a decade of internal conversations. The related legal dispute is still ongoing.

Another issue is that in bankruptcy proceedings a customer database can be treated as an asset like office furniture and transferred to the highest bidder. After a company disappears, customers are left with no counterpart to raise objections to. SpaceXAI is reported to have sought operating data and customer information from startups in exactly that situation.

SpaceX's internal policy on data use has already been made public. Musk said at an all-hands meeting in August that Grok would not stop at buying external data and would also train on SpaceX's own records. He told employees that Grok would, in effect, "inherit your thoughts."

Musk presented this not as a problem but as a feature. He told employees that because the model would absorb not only work outputs but also members' perspectives, they should think of themselves as growing the model. He did not, however, explain in detail what categories of employee data would actually be used or how they would be incorporated.

The product schedule is also tied in. SpaceX released Grok 4.5 as its first model after completing its xAI integration in July. Next are another deal involving Musk, a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, and the launch of the next Grok. That makes how far Grok will expand its training-data scope, and whether talks to buy bankrupt-company data move to execution, the next points to watch.