micro1 Pledges $1B Backed by Citi and Hercules Capital to License Enterprise Data for AI Training

San Francisco-based AI training company micro1 announced plans to spend $1 billion over the next 12 months acquiring and licensing operational data from companies, according to a report by The Next Web (https://thenextweb.com/news/micro1-1bn-enterprise-data-ai-training-citi-hercules). The capital for the initiative is being provided by Citi and Hercules Capital.

The funds will be deployed through micro1's Company Data Partnerships programme. The startup uses de-identified corporate records to construct reinforcement learning environments that simulate real-world business operations, allowing AI models and autonomous agents to practice navigating workflows, resolving edge cases, and making operational decisions.

"Real business operations involve incomplete information, competing priorities and exceptions that require judgment," micro1 said in its announcement. The company stated that the capital will expand the variety of industries and workflows covered by its simulation environments while giving enterprises a path to monetize accumulated operational knowledge.

The programme is seeking standard operating procedures, internal knowledge bases, CRM records, project histories, quality assurance workflows, decision-making logs, and human feedback on AI outputs. Payouts vary based on dataset quality and uniqueness: qualified partnerships exceed $100,000, extensive multi-team datasets exceed $500,000, and highly unique proprietary data commands more than $1 million.

Participating companies retain ownership of their underlying data. micro1 said it removes personal information "when relevant," may synthetically rewrite certain datasets to loosen ties to original records, and allows companies to review sample data before integration. The programme targets English-speaking organizations with more than 30 employees and established documentation, prioritizing US businesses before expanding to other Western markets.

The company operates three internal research labs, including one focused on robotics, and assists AI research labs and enterprises in training frontier models and evaluating autonomous agents. In September, micro1 submitted a competing bid for Spirit Airlines' customer data during bankruptcy proceedings, though a court-appointed privacy official ultimately supported Google's $10 million acquisition of that dataset.