Your Former Employer Is Selling Your Slacks and Emails to Train AI

Defunct startups are increasingly selling internal Slack, email, and code archives through intermediaries as training data for AI systems.

The data is especially valuable for reinforcement learning “gyms” that teach AI agents how to perform workplace tasks.

Critics say these archives may still expose identifiable employee conversations and are not truly anonymized.

The trend helps failed founders recover value, but it raises major concerns about privacy, consent, and data governance.