Article

The $1 billion commitment to company records

By TrustPast

Published October 30, 2026 · Updated October 31, 2026

On 9 October 2026, micro1 posted a short announcement about company records. It said it would spend 1 billion dollars over the next 12 months acquiring and licensing them. A number that size travels fast, and it can pick up details on the way. This page settles what the post actually says, what it leaves out, and what it means for a trade company that has kept its files for years.

The post, in micro1’s own words

The post is four short paragraphs. The first sentence carries the news: micro1 announced “a commitment to spend $1 billion over the next 12 months acquiring and licensing enterprise operational data through our Company Data Partnerships program.”

The second paragraph says who it’s for. “The initiative gives businesses a new revenue stream from the operational intelligence they have built over years.” The same paragraph says micro1 “uses de-identified company data.” That’s the first thing worth noting. The post is about records with the names taken out, not records with the names left in.

The third paragraph says why. “Real business operations involve incomplete information, competing priorities and exceptions that require judgment.” micro1 says it needs settings “that preserve the context behind how businesses work.” It adds that the spending “will expand the range of industries and workflows represented” in what it builds.

The last line names where the money comes from: micro1 says it is financing the plan through capital from two outside financial firms. That’s the whole post. No list of trades, no figure per company, no closing date.

Business Wire carried the same announcement as a release on the same day, marked as a paid press release. Pulse 2.0 reported it two days later, describing “de-identified operational data representing how businesses function in practice.” Business Insider covered it later in October. Its reporter wrote that micro1 “says it pays $100,000 to $2 million for a single midsize company’s data” (indicative, not an offer). None of the three names a closing date for applications.

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What kind of records it means

The post says “enterprise operational data” and stops there. To see what that covers, you need micro1’s data partnerships page, which goes further.

There, micro1 says it is looking for “data that reflects how work is actually performed within an organization.” It lists procedures, process documents, internal knowledge bases, workflows, templates and “other business process artifacts.” Its eligibility answer names “internal communications, SOPs, project histories, CRM records, support tickets, and other business documentation.”

The same page groups examples by department. Under operations and logistics it lists “Operational SOPs, logistics processes, fulfillment workflows, inventory management, and internal operations.” Under customer support it lists “ticket workflows” and “QA processes.” Under legal and contracts it lists “contract workflows” and “review processes.”

None of those headings says roofing, HVAC or electrical. Read them with a contractor’s files on the desk, though, and they fit. Project histories are your job folders. Support tickets are your service calls. Contract workflows are your change orders. Inventory management is the van stock and the parts room.

For the full split of which trade files count and which don’t, the cornerstone page on what data buyers want from a trade business goes through them one by one.

Why a buyer wants working records, not public text

micro1’s data partnerships page puts the reason in one line. The data it needs “can no longer be found on the public internet.” It “lives inside real companies like yours.”

Here’s the plain version. Public text tells you how a job is supposed to go. A manufacturer’s install guide. A code book. A trade magazine article on sizing a condenser. What it doesn’t hold is what happened on a real job, on a real Tuesday, when the plan met the building.

That’s the gap the post is pointing at. A manual says the panel goes on the north wall. The job file says it went on the east wall because the slab had a footing nobody drew, and here’s the email where the engineer agreed. A price book says a service call takes an hour. The ticket says it took three, because the first part was wrong and the supplier was out.

The post calls this “incomplete information, competing priorities and exceptions that require judgment.” A contractor calls it Tuesday.

Business Insider reported that micro1 can take a company’s records “up to a certain timestamp” and freeze them. In plain words, the work is replayed from a point in the past, decision by decision. The same report says micro1 “usually wants to license a company’s entire data corpus.” That’s the reason a single estimate is worth little and ten years of estimates, with the jobs they became, are worth asking about.

The buyer’s end use, stated once in the only words we use for it: the records help micro1’s customers to train AI models on how real work gets done. Our page on what those working settings are, and why they need real workflows explains the idea at more length.

What it means for a trade company with years of records

The post sets no price for any one company. What it does say is how widely micro1 means to look. The post says the spending will widen “the range of industries and workflows represented.” That sentence is the opening for trades that have rarely been asked.

micro1’s eligibility line is plain: “established companies with 30+ full-time employees, mature business operations, and substantial historical operational data.” It wants records “primarily in English” and says it is “currently prioritizing US companies, followed by other Western markets.”

On years, micro1 says “There’s no fixed minimum number of files, documents, or terabytes.” It also says “Companies with several years of records across multiple business systems are generally a stronger fit.” Its payout estimator asks how many years of data you have, and explains the question as “Typically the number of years you’ve been in business.”

So the useful question for an owner isn’t whether 1 billion dollars is a lot. It’s whether the company’s own work was written down, year after year, in systems you can still open. Our page on how many years of records count shows how to count them, including across a software switch.

If you’ve already checked the bar, who qualifies for the data partnership goes through each published criterion.

What the commitment does not say

This section matters as much as the one above. Here’s what the post leaves out, read against micro1’s other pages.

No figure per company. The post gives a total and a period. It doesn’t divide the total by anything. micro1’s data partnerships page publishes three tiers: $100K-500K, $500K-2M and $2M+ (indicative, not an offer). The header of the same page reads “We’re paying out $200k-2M+ for the data your business already generates” (indicative, not an offer). Its payment step says payments “typically” range “from $150K to over $2M” (indicative, not an offer). Its referral page lists “$100K-$2M+ for approved data packages” (indicative, not an offer). Those are micro1’s published ranges for a company’s records, and they don’t all start at the same figure. Our page on what a company’s records are worth walks through the tiers.

No number of companies. The post doesn’t say how many partnerships the money is meant to cover. Anyone dividing 1 billion dollars by a guess and quoting you the answer is doing arithmetic, not reporting.

No guarantee. micro1’s referral page says “All companies must complete micro1’s qualification and evaluation process.” It says “Each partnership is evaluated individually” on its data partnerships page. A large budget doesn’t change either sentence.

No deadline. The 12 months are micro1’s own spending window. micro1 publishes no closing date for applications on any of its four pages about the program. If someone tells you to apply by a date, ask them where it’s written. The answer will be nowhere micro1 has published.

No timeline. micro1’s referral page says “There is no guaranteed timeframe between application and partnership completion.” It says timelines depend on “the company’s eligibility, the complexity of its data, legal requirements, and how quickly it completes each step.”

No list of trades. The post names no industry. The data partnerships page names departments, not sectors. So whether a given trade fits is decided at review, company by company.

We say all this plainly because the number invites stories. The post didn’t change the files. It told owners that a buyer is looking, and it set no deadline.

What decides the price, in micro1’s words

The commitment says nothing about pricing. The data partnerships page says a fair amount. “Compensation is determined based on the characteristics and value of the data being contributed.” The factors it lists are “dataset size and volume, workflow complexity, data quality, domain expertise represented, and the uniqueness of the operational knowledge contained within the dataset.”

micro1’s payout estimator adds its own caution. It gives an “Indicative estimate only” and says “Final payout is determined based on data sources, volume, quality, access terms, and due diligence.” Our page on why the final offer can differ from the estimate goes through what that means for a range shown before anyone reads the files.

Business Insider’s report matches that list. It says micro1 “pays more for larger, more complex datasets, as well as for data that represents a unique type of work or knowledge.”

In a trade company, in our words, those factors look like this. Volume is years of jobs, not a box of them. Complexity is the commercial retrofit with eleven change orders, not the like-for-like swap. Domain expertise is the estimator’s note on why the bid moved. Uniqueness is the kind of work only a few firms in the country do.

What this means for an electrical contractor

Take a hypothetical commercial electrical contractor with 55 people. This is our own example, not a case micro1 has published. Twenty years in business, a projects side and a service side, two offices.

Its records, as an owner would list them:

Estimates and takeoffs. Every bid since 2009 in the estimating program, with the revisions. The ones won, the ones lost, and the notes on why the number moved after the walk-through.
Job folders. Submittals, requests for information, change orders, daily logs and the punch list at close-out. One folder per job, roughly 140 jobs a year.
Service tickets. Each call logged in the field service system since it went in, with the technician’s notes on what was found.
Email with general contractors. The threads behind the change orders, where the price was argued and agreed.
Procedures. The safety manual, the lock-out procedure, the checklist for energising a new panel.

Against micro1’s published words, most of those sit under “project histories,” “support tickets,” “internal communications” and “SOPs.” The value, in our reading, sits in the links between them. The bid that dropped after the site visit. The change order for the undersized feeder, and the four emails it took to settle it. The tripping breaker that took three visits to diagnose, with what each visit ruled out.

None of that needs the building owner’s name. All of it needs the record left as it was. The paperwork’s untidiness is, for once, an asset.

What is never included

micro1’s commitment post says the company uses “de-identified company data.” Its data partnerships page says personally identifiable information “is removed when relevant.” It says personal and identifying information “is removed or transformed before your data is shared with third parties.” It says the data is “licensed exclusively to labs and enterprises based in the U.S. and allied countries,” kept separate from other companies’ data, and that raw data is deleted on an agreed schedule.

In a trade company, that means the customer’s name on the estimate is not what is wanted. Nor is the card number on the invoice, the bank details on the payment, or the home address on the service ticket. What is wanted is how the work was done: how an estimate became a job, how a change order was settled, how a repair was diagnosed. Our page on how de-identification works shows that split on real record types.

The rest of this section is TrustPast’s own advice, not micro1’s guidance. micro1 doesn’t publish a fixed list of excluded records. Expect these to stay out unless micro1 tells you otherwise: attorney-client privileged records, health information, payment-card and financial-account details, Social Security numbers, minors’ data, biometric data, and classified or export-controlled material. Anything a client owns under contract, such as stamped drawings, stays the client’s. Ask micro1 before you apply if any of your records sit near those lines.

Two more points, also our advice. Don’t scrub names yourself first: micro1 says a company doesn’t need to anonymize its data before transferring it, because it “has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.” Hand-scrubbing can strip the context that makes the file worth anything. And check the samples: micro1 says companies “are given the opportunity to review representative samples before prepared data is used.” The full list, with our reasons, is on what is never included, and the controls are summed up on how it’s safe.

What the company keeps

micro1’s answer on ownership is one sentence: “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.” This is a licence, not a sale. Your estimators keep pricing from last year’s jobs. Your service desk keeps pulling up a customer’s history when the phone rings. Nothing about the commitment changes that.

On money, micro1 says it has 30 days to review and approve the data after transfer. It then asks for an invoice, and “payment will be made within 30 days of invoicing.”

How to check fit

Four steps, in our order. None of them needs a file to leave the building.

Count the people. micro1’s bar is “30+ full-time employees.” Count honestly.
Count the years. Find the oldest estimate and the oldest work order you can still open. Note which systems hold what, and any gaps.
Describe the records in a sentence each. “Every job since 2009 has a folder with the bid, the revisions, the change orders and the daily logs” says far more than “we have job files.”
Mark what stays out. Client-owned drawings, HR files, payroll and bank exports.

Then see where you’d land. Our estimate asks five questions and shows a range inside micro1’s published band. It’s our range, not micro1’s offer; micro1 prices each company after its own review. If the range is worth your time, what happens after you apply sets out the interview, the call and the contract.

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, read micro1’s public pages and explain them. We aren’t part of micro1 and we don’t speak for it. You apply yourself, through the button below, and every conversation after that is between you and micro1. We never see your files. micro1 pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing, as our page on whether licensing your records costs anything sets out.

The commitment is a fact worth knowing, and micro1 publishes no closing date for it. Worth two minutes to see your range?

TrustPast

Questions and answers

What did micro1 announce on 9 October 2026?

A “commitment to spend $1 billion over the next 12 months acquiring and licensing enterprise operational data through our Company Data Partnerships program.” The post says the initiative “gives businesses a new revenue stream from the operational intelligence they have built over years,” and that micro1 “uses de-identified company data.”

Does the commitment say how much one company will be paid?

No. The post gives the total and the 12 months, nothing per company. micro1’s data partnerships page publishes three tiers, $100K-500K, $500K-2M and $2M+ (indicative, not an offer), and says “Each partnership is evaluated individually.”

Is there a deadline to apply?

micro1 publishes none. The 12 months in the post describe micro1’s own spending plan. None of micro1’s four public pages on the program names a closing date for applications.

Does the commitment guarantee that a company will be accepted?

No. micro1’s referral page says “All companies must complete micro1's qualification and evaluation process” and “There is no guaranteed timeframe between application and partnership completion.”

Does micro1 want our customers’ names and payment records?

No. The post says micro1 “uses de-identified company data,” and its data partnerships page says personally identifiable information “is removed when relevant.” What it says it wants is “data that reflects how work is actually performed within an organization.”

Which companies does micro1 say fit the program?

“Established companies with 30+ full-time employees, mature business operations, and substantial historical operational data,” in micro1’s words. Data should be primarily in English, and micro1 says it is “currently prioritizing US companies, followed by other Western markets.”