How We Source and Check Every Number on This Site

Every number on this site links to the record it comes from, and every record links to the page it was read from, with that page's own words. Nothing is typed into a page and left there. A price, a deal, a lawsuit, a buyer's contract clause or a law is a record: a dated fact with its source quoted word for word. A median, a range or a count is a figure: computed from named records, with its working written out. A guide is the top layer: it answers one question and shows only records and figures, each one a link down to its evidence. Today that evidence is 2,854 facts on record, read from 2,133 sources.

This page explains how that works, so you can check anything we say before you rely on it. It is written for a holder deciding whether to trust our numbers in a negotiation, a buyer's data team comparing our figures with its own, and a reporter or researcher who wants to cite them.

There is a reason we hold ourselves to this. AIData.Broker acts as the agent of holders who license or sell their data, so we are a party in this market, not a neutral observer. A party's numbers are worth exactly as much as the evidence a reader can check behind them. So we built the site so that every claim can be checked, and so that a claim nobody can check does not appear.

Contents

1. The five levels, from source to guide
2. What a record is
3. How we weigh a source
4. How a figure is made
5. How everything stays current
6. Laws and rulings
7. How a guide is built on the evidence
8. What we do not do
9. Reusing our data
10. Questions people ask
11. What this means for you

1. The five levels, from source to guide

The site is built as a pyramid in which each level is made only from the one below it. A reader can enter at any level and move up or down.

At the bottom are sources: the pages, filings, court dockets, price lists, contracts and feeds we read. Each has its own page on the sources register, with every record read from it and, for 590 of them, a permanent copy in the Wayback Machine, so a source that changes or disappears can still be checked as it stood when we read it.

Above them are records, one fact each, on the records register: price observations, licensing deals, court cases, funding rounds, published revenue figures, buyers' published terms, contract clauses, the terms of business software, closure signals, laws and rulings. Every record has its own page with the source's words, the date of the event, the date we read it, the organisations it concerns and, where it applies, the record that replaced it.

Above records are entities: the organisations, kinds of data, kinds of holder, business systems and closing companies the records are about. Each has a page that gathers its records: 300 organisations on the companies register, 9 kinds of data (for example company records and source code), 8 kinds of holder (for example software companies), and the business systems whose terms we read (for example Slack).

Above entities are figures: every number that is computed rather than read, on the figures register. A figure states its derivation in plain words and lists every record it was computed from.

At the top is content: the guides, the hubs of each topic, the tools, the weekly newsletter, the open datasets and the answers our MCP server gives to AI assistants. Content shows only records and figures, by reference. The map shows all five levels with their live counts and the pipelines that feed each one.

2. What a record is

A record is the smallest unit of evidence we keep: one fact, stated the way its source states it. Take the largest realised sale of a company's records on our books. In the bankruptcy of Spirit Airlines, the sale agreement filed with the court sets the price Google paid for the airline's archive as Ten Million U.S. Dollars ($10,000,000.00) per company archive (aggregate purchase price). The record holds that phrase exactly as the filing writes it, the docket number and exhibit it comes from, the date of the filing, the date we read it, the organisations involved and the kind of data it prices.

A record keeps the source's own words for three reasons. First, so a reader can check the number against the source without trusting our summary. Second, so a later reading can test whether the source still says it (see section 5). Third, so the record carries the qualifiers its source attached: "up to", "from", "aggregate", "per company", "reported". A number stripped of its qualifier is the most common way a market figure becomes wrong as it travels.

Every record also carries a basis: how firm it is. A court filing is a docket; a company's own filing or page is stated; a journalist's report of a figure is reported; a vendor's description of its own results is self-reported; a price on a catalogue is a listing; a count we made ourselves, such as our daily census of which websites block AI crawlers, is observed. The basis travels with the record into every figure and guide that uses it.

When a source publishes a newer figure, the old record is not deleted. It is marked as replaced, its page points to its successor, and every figure and guide that cited it is flagged for refresh. That is how the site keeps a history of what the market said and when, instead of silently overwriting it.

3. How we weigh a source

Not every source is equal, and the records say so. We use five rules.

Primary first. A fact is read where it was first made: a company's securities filing, a court's docket, a buyer's own terms page, a regulator's own text. Reddit's data licensing income is a good example of why. Reddit's own registration statement with the SEC states that its licences signed in January 2024 carried an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million over two to three years. That is stated, in a filing made under securities law. The often-quoted figure for Google's share, a reported 60 million a year, comes from press reports, and our record of it says "reported" in its own value, because no filing by either company states it.

Reports are labelled as reports. When the only source for a figure is a press report, the record's basis is "reported" and every guide that uses it says so in the sentence ("a reported figure"). A reported figure is never the only support for a claim a guide turns on.

A party's claim is its claim. When a vendor or a buyer describes its own prices, volumes or results, the record says whose claim it is. A buyer's estimator, such as the range $100K–$5M per company that one buyer shows on its home page, is a price that buyer is willing to say in public. It is an offer to holders, not a sale, and it sits on that side of the market in every figure.

Aggregators are reading lists. Sites that collect other people's deals and prices are useful for finding sources and useless as sources. We take the names and the links from them, read each fact on its primary page, and cite the primary page. Where an aggregator is all we have, the record says "reported" and names it, and the gap goes to the research queue.

Sides of the market are kept apart. A price can be offered to holders, paid to the people who make data, asked for an off-the-shelf dataset, paid in a sale that happened, or charged by a vendor to make data to order. These differ by large multiples for the same kind of data, so every price record carries its side, and no figure mixes them. The market rates show each side separately.

4. How a figure is made

A figure is any number computed from records rather than read from one: a count, a median, a range, a ratio. Every figure has its own page that states the derivation in plain words and lists every input record, so the arithmetic can be redone by hand.

Take the median price of a company's records in sales that actually happened. The figure is $28.3K per company, and its page says exactly how it was reached: which public prices on the sales-that-happened side are stated per company, how a range is counted (its geometric midpoint), which open-ended figures ("from", "up to") are listed but not averaged, and where the middle half of the prices runs. Compare it with the range of prices offered to holders for the same kind of data, $174K to $693K per company: the gap between the two is one of the most useful things a holder can know before a negotiation, and both numbers can be traced to every price behind them.

Some figures are small and specific. The Spirit Airlines auction moved the price of one archive by 2.5x from the opening bid to the late offer that followed it; that figure lists its two input records, the opening bid and the late offer, and nothing else. Others are large: the count of 1,022 price observations, read from 707 sources, is a figure too.

Where a number is our own setting rather than the market's (a fee band, the size of sale we take on, a parameter of the valuation model), it is read from the one place that defines it, and where it rests on market evidence it is a figure that lists the records behind it. A valuation from the valuation tool is arithmetic on public prices, never an offer or a promise, and it names the records it was priced from.

5. How everything stays current

A market that moves within a quarter makes a static research site wrong within months. Four mechanisms keep this one current, and each is visible.

Pipelines with schedules. Every dataset on the site is fed by a pipeline with a cadence: the price research, the deal and case ledgers, the source watch, the archive, the closure watch, the AI crawler census, the catalogue readings of data on offer and others. The map lists each one, what it reads, the level of the pyramid it writes and how fresh each store is against its own cadence. A store that falls behind its cadence shows as stale.

The daily source watch. Every morning the watch re-reads the sources behind the records and checks whether each record's quote is still on its page. A record's page says when its quote was last found again, or that it was not found, so a reader can see at a glance whether the evidence still stands. Quotes that go missing go to a corrections pass.

Permanent copies. For 590 sources we keep a permanent copy in the Wayback Machine, linked from the source's page, so a page that changes or disappears can still be read as it stood when we cited it.

Replaced records are flagged everywhere. When a newer record replaces an older one, our source check lists every figure and every guide sentence that still rests on the old one, and the daily research run points each at its successor. A guide never keeps an old price without someone deciding it should.

6. Laws and rulings

Legal statements are evidence like any other, and they are held to a stricter rule: primary text only. A statute is cited from the legislature's own text or the official code, a regulation from the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, a ruling from the court's own opinion, agency guidance from the agency's own page. A law firm's summary can point us to the text; it is never the authority.

Each law or ruling a guide relies on is a record of its own kind, with its citation, its jurisdiction, the passage quoted word for word and one or two plain sentences on what it means for a holder. Before a law enters our store, a script reads its primary page again and confirms the quoted passage is there, word for word: for federal regulations it reads the eCFR's official XML, for court opinions the court's own PDF. A passage that cannot be confirmed does not enter. The laws and rulings appear in the records register alongside prices and deals, and the rights and law hub brings them together with the terms of each business system and the questions a buyer's counsel asks.

None of this is legal advice. It is the research a holder and its counsel need to start from, with the text in front of them.

7. How a guide is built on the evidence

A guide on this site answers one question, the way people ask it, completely. We choose the questions from what people search for in this market (Google's own suggestions are the best record of the phrasing) and from what holders ask us, and we write a guide only where no existing page already answers the question.

Every guide is written from an evidence pack: every record, figure and organisation that bears on its question, drawn from the registers with each item's source and basis. Its numbers are tokens that link to their records, and its legal statements link to the laws and rulings. At the foot of every guide, "What this guide rests on" counts and lists every record and figure it cites. On every record's own page, "Cited in these guides" lists the guides that use it, so the pyramid can be read upwards as well as down.

Guides are organised in seven topics, each a question the market asks: selling data, prices, buyers, deals, rights and law, what sells and this one, research. Each topic has one page to start from, and every guide shows where it sits and what else its topic holds. All guides shows the whole tree on one page.

When a guide needs a fact that no record states yet, the guide says the point without the number, or leaves it out, and the missing fact goes on a list the daily research run works through. When the record exists, the sentence gains its number and its link. That is the loop between the research and the content: the guides tell the research what it lacks, and the research tells the guides what changed.

8. What we do not do

We do not type numbers. If a number is on a page, it links to its record or figure. Our source check lists every number that does not, and that list only ever gets shorter.

We do not present estimates as facts. A valuation is an indication from public prices, and the site says so beside every one. A range we compute is labelled with its working. Where there is no public price for something, we say so rather than inventing one.

We do not cite aggregators or rumours as evidence. See section 3.

We do not publish private negotiations. Nothing a holder tells us, and nothing about a sale we are running, appears in the public records. Holders' counts enter the market statistics only without their names and combined with others', as our agreements say.

We do not hide our position. We act for holders, and only holders pay us, a fee fixed in the mandate, only if a sale closes. No buyer pays us in a sale we run. Where a guide describes how we work, it says so plainly.

9. Reusing our data

The registers behind the site are published as open datasets you can download and cite. Our compilation of the tables is licensed under CC BY 4.0; quotes keep their sources' own terms, and the text of the guides is ours and not covered by that licence. Each table page shows how to cite it.

AI assistants can query the same records through our MCP server, which answers with the records and their sources rather than with prose. The weekly newsletter summarises what moved in the records each week.

If you find an error, write to us through the contact options on this site with the record's link. A correction becomes a new record, the old one is marked as replaced, and every page that cited it follows.

Questions people ask

Where do your AI training data prices come from? From the parties themselves wherever possible: buyers' terms pages, court filings, securities filings, vendors' price guides and named press. Each price is a record with its source quoted, on the price board, and each median on the market rates lists the prices behind it.

How do I know a number is still right? Open its record. The record shows when its source was last re-read and whether the quote was found again, and links a permanent copy of the source where we hold one.

Why do some figures say "reported"? Because the only source is a press report and no party has stated the figure itself. We keep reported figures because they are often the only public signal, and we label them so they are weighed accordingly.

Do you estimate missing prices? No. Where no public price exists, the site says so. The valuation tool combines public prices into a range for what you hold and names the prices it used; it is an indication, not an estimate presented as a price.

Can I cite your figures in a report or article? Yes. Cite the figure's or record's own page, which states its derivation or source. The table compilation is under CC BY 4.0, and quotes keep their sources' terms.

Are you neutral? No. We act for holders who sell or license data, and we say so. That is why every number can be checked down to its source: you do not have to trust us to use the evidence.

What this means for you

If you hold data and are weighing an offer, open the records behind the numbers you are given and the ones we publish, and compare like with like: the same side of the market, the same unit, the same basis. The offer check does that against an offer you already have, and the valuation gives you a range from public prices with the records it used.

If you are researching the market, start from the map or all guides, and follow any number down to its source. Every step is a link.

This page describes our research methods. It is not legal, tax or investment advice.