Mode BizBuyData pays for your company data: read your NDAs first

Mode.Inc now wants to pay you for your company data. Its new program, BizBuyData.com, licenses old internal messages, emails, and project histories to AI labs that train workplace agents. The bar is low: 20 office employees, 10 for an accounting firm, six for a law firm. For a small business, that is a check for data you already have. Before you take it, read what you promised your clients about that data.

What actually happened

Mode.Inc announced the program on October 13 in a Business Wire release. The terms, as the company states them:

• Who qualifies: U.S. businesses with at least 20 full-time office employees who use digital workplace tools. Accounting firms qualify at 10 employees, law firms at six. Legal and accounting data gets priority.
• What is licensed: historical operational records, such as internal messages, emails, and project histories.
• How it works: you pick which systems and date ranges go in before any export, and you never give up passwords. Mode says it de-identifies the data with its own tools over 15 to 30 days, then shares it for AI training.
• Payment: an initial estimate, a 14-day nonbinding letter of intent, then payment about 60 days after you accept the final offer. The release gives no rates. The price depends on how much data you have and what kind.
• Referrals: the greater of $50,000 or 6% of the payout.

The headline says "$5 billion," but the release does not say what that number covers. The buyers are not named. The release only calls them "AI labs."

Why it matters for your business

Your email archive is not only your data. It holds your clients' tax returns, deal terms, disputes, and complaints about their own staff. The law firms and accounting firms that Mode most wants are the ones with the strictest confidentiality duties.

De-identification sounds fine until you remember how small your world is. A thread about "the dental group in Chandler with the payroll problem" names nobody and identifies everybody. Mode says its tools remove names and sensitive content. You have no way to check that, and the data does not come back once it is in a training set.

If you are considering it anyway, do the homework first:

• Read your client agreements and NDAs. Many prohibit disclosure to third parties, de-identified or not.
• Check your professional rules. Bar and CPA confidentiality obligations do not stop at a vendor's redaction step.
• Ask who the buyer is. "AI labs" is not an answer. Get names into the contract.
• Price the downside. One client who finds out may cost you more than the payout.

Sources: Mode.Inc via Business Wire.