Sell your company's Slack or Teams history to AI

Team chat shows how people really work: the question in a channel, the three replies, the decision and the follow-up. Five of the companies we list take Slack or Teams history, and micro1’s partnership for closed companies asks for substantial Slack or Microsoft Teams history.

Chat has already sold in public

MIT Technology Review reported that Spirit Airlines’ records, including 500 million Teams messages and 100 million emails, went to Google for $10 million in the airline’s bankruptcy. The sale still needs a judge’s approval.

Most deals are smaller and private: an operating company licenses a copy of its history and keeps working.

Private channels and DMs need Business+ or Enterprise

Slack’s export depends on your plan:

• Free and Pro export public channels only, with links to files. On Free, file links cover only the last 90 days.
• Business+ also exports private channels and direct messages. A Workspace Owner has to apply for that export tool.
• Enterprise exports everything too. An Org Owner asks Slack’s support team for access.

If most of your team talked in private channels or DMs, the plan you’re on decides what you can offer.

Slack deletes old history on the free plan

On the free plan, you can see and search the last 90 days, and messages and files more than one year old are permanently deleted. Slack started that rolling deletion on August 26, 2024.

Paid plans keep everything by default, unless an owner set a shorter retention policy. Check it before anything else.

• Don’t downgrade to save money. Dropping to free starts deleting the history a company would pay for.
• Don’t delete the workspace. Slack says messages and files can’t be retrieved after that, and recommends exporting first.

Use Slack’s own export, not an app

Slack’s API terms bar using data pulled through its API to train a large language model, or to bulk export message and file data, unless an additional agreement allows it. Plan on Slack’s own export tool, run by your owner account.

Teams: export through Microsoft’s APIs

Microsoft’s Teams Export APIs export one-to-one chats, group chats, meeting chats and channel messages. An admin has to approve the app’s permissions, and each user whose data is exported needs an active Teams license. A deleted team can still be exported for up to 30 days.

That license rule is the catch for a company winding down. Export before you remove licenses.

Teams: the clocks that run out

For most Microsoft 365 subscriptions, an ended subscription is expired for 30 days, then disabled for 90 days, with data open to admins only, then deleted. After a cancellation, data might be deleted after 90 days and will be deleted no later than 180 days.

Your staff wrote it, so think about them first

• Strip the obvious. HR channels, health talk, salary threads and anything with legal advice.
• Treat DMs with care. They’re the most personal part of the history. Decide whether to offer them at all.
• California counts employees. Since January 1, 2023, California’s privacy law covers employees’ personal information, not only customers’.

Ask each company how it removes names and personal details before you share a sample.