1918

Armistice Day: World War I ends

HISTORY.com Editors

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Published: March 10, 2010Last Updated: November 09, 2026

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left 9 million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least 5 million civilians died from disease, starvation or exposure.

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On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife were shot to death by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.

How a Wrong Turn Started World War I

Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination caused the outbreak of World War I, but what caused the assassination itself? It may have been something as simple as a wrong turn.

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On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Serbia’s ally Russia ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany.

For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France.

The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September, the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris. By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front—the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium—the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.

World War I Armistice Day Celebrations

On November 11, 1918, World War I finally came to an end after four-plus years of combat. Armistice Day was wildly celebrated throughout the world, and in this rare footage, we see how New York, Washington D.C. and Paris took to the streets with pure joy.

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In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed, the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany. In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918.

World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict—the Treaty of Versailles of 1919—forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.

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More soldiers died on the last day of WWI than on D-Day. Find out why Allied leaders found outrageous excuses to send 13,000 men to their deaths against a defeated enemy. The senseless 11th-hour slaughter captures the whole of WWI.

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Democrats press White House on prediction market betting by staff

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Camila Grigera Naón

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November 10, 2026, 12:16 PM ET

Jeff Merkley (left) and Elizabeth Warren (right) sent a letter to the White House counsel on Monday.ANDREW HARRER—GETTY IMAGES

Two Democratic senators are pressing the White House to disclose whether employees have used inside information to trade on prediction market platforms. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) sent a letter to White House counsel Will Scharf on Monday asking what safeguards the administration has in place to prevent staff from using confidential government information to profit from bets.

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The request follows a July report that Gabriel Perez, President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, allegedly made over $100,000 on prediction market Kalshi by betting on which words Trump would use in more than a dozen speeches. Perez later reached a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that required him to surrender his profits, pay a penalty, and agree to a three-year trading ban.

“It has been four months since this White House insider trading scandal came to light, and we write to you to understand what further steps—if any—your office is taking to prevent abuses of power,” read a copy of the letter shared with Fortune.

The letter also asked whether White House staff receive training on rules against using nonpublic information to trade or bet and whether officials contacted the CFTC or Justice Department about Perez’s case. They requested a copy of a memo warning staff against such bets and answers to their questions by Nov. 23.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

The case is one of several that have raised concerns about insiders using nonpublic information to profit on prediction markets. In April, federal prosecutors charged a U.S. soldier with using classified information to make more than $400,000 on Polymarket bets tied to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. In February, six newly created Polymarket accounts drew scrutiny after earning roughly $1 million in combined profits betting the U.S. would strike Iran before the month ended.

The letter offers a preview of the scrutiny the Trump administration could face when Democrats retake control of Congress in January. Warren is expected to chair the Senate Banking Committee, giving her a powerful platform to investigate financial firms and potential conflicts involving the president’s family businesses.

Other Democrats are also pushing for restrictions on prediction markets. On Tuesday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) called on Congress to ban sports prediction markets, describing them as “sports betting disguised as financial trading.”

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The Trump family has expanded its ties to the prediction market industry during Trump’s second term. Donald Trump Jr. advises both Kalshi and Polymarket, and 1789 Capital, the venture firm where he is a partner, has invested in Polymarket. Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social in which the president holds a stake through a trust, announced plans in October 2025 for a prediction market service called Truth Predict with crypto exchange Crypto.com. It later scaled back the initial offering to a marketing partnership.

Fortune Daily breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms Fortune’s trusted reporting into actionable, conversational, and entertaining insights for an emerging class of business leaders. Watch here.

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By Camila Grigera Naón Crypto Fellow

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Trump’s third way on Iran

Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters during the G7 foreign ministers summit in Paris yesterday. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images When Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with his G7 counterparts in Paris yesterday, he told them that President Trump had considered resuming the war with Iran or cutting a deal — but chose a third option: strangling the Iranian regime, Axios’ Barak Ravid reports. Rubio explained: “It’s not just return to war or sign a ridiculous peace deal. We won’t do a stupid deal. The third option we have is to continue to do what we do now,” Rubio said, according to three people in the room. He went on to say that the U.S. is imposing devastating costs on Iran’s economy, making it harder for it to fund terrorist organizations or rebuild its military. And there’s no end date. The intrigue: U.S. officials say that Rubio was among the members of Trump’s national security team who pushed for the strangulation strategy, along with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law. Keep reading.

AI industry’s week from hell

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

A week of political upheaval, financial turmoil and salacious scandal delivered one final indignity to the AI industry yesterday, as Anthropic’s staggering IPO target fell short of expectations, Axios’ Zachary Basu and Ben Berkowitz write. Why it matters: The bubble is wobbling. Investors, businesses and governments need a spectacular success from Anthropic to stave off a crisis of confidence that could tear through the broader economy . Zoom in: Anthropic announced plans yesterday to raise as much as $64.4 billion in one of the largest IPOs in history, targeting a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion. That’s roughly $600 billion below what investors envisioned just months ago. Data: S&P Capital IQ Pro. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Zoom out: Anthropic’s valuation reset caps a punishing stretch of new challenges that began with last week’s stunning midterm results A blue wave of AI-skeptical Democrats will arrive in Congress armed with subpoena power and an appetite for investigating the industry’s safety failures and vast political influence Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the central cog in AI’s global gears, was swept up in an espionage scandal after admitting to an affair with a suspected Chinese spy. His board, the FBI and Congress are investigating. Nvidia has shed more than $1 trillion in market value since the first revelation Wall Street went into a tailspin as investors reckoned with the implications of the Democratic sweep — including in data-center havens like Texas — for AI’s sprawling infrastructure ambitions. The Nasdaq lost $2.5 trillion in market value Thursday before staging a sharp rebound. Keep reading.

Miller’s focus: MAGA and men

Stephen Miller and Natalie Harp walk to Marine One on Friday. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Stephen Miller wants to use his new role as White House chief of staff to win back young and minority men who helped elect President Trump in 2024 but swung toward Democrats in the midterms, two people familiar with the administration’s plans tell Axios’ Alex Isenstadt. Why it matters: Miller, named last week to replace Susie Wiles, plans to focus on reviving the populist agenda that helped the president build his 2024 coalition, with an emphasis on working-class voters. Young, working-class and minority men fled the GOP in droves in last week’s elections, amid high prices fueled by Trump’s tariffs, the war in Iran, and concerns about AI’s impact on the job market. Trump won men under 30 by 14 points in 2024, according to a Tufts study. Last week, Democrats won them by 22 points in House races — a 36-point shift. Latino men also swung sharply toward Democrats, as the administration’s hard-line immigration crackdown became an increasingly contentious political issue Zoom in: Miller wants to spend more time highlighting administration policies he believes haven’t gotten enough attention, and that will appeal to working-class voters concerned about the economy, insiders tell Axios. His priorities will sound familiar to Trump watchers: eliminating what the administration considers “woke” policies from colleges and workplaces, lowering prescription drug prices, and rooting out government and health-care fraud. He also wants to emphasize reducing the federal bureaucracy and push for permitting reform, while highlighting how those efforts could help address affordability. Sources in the business community say Miller’s ideological drive makes him mostly impervious to typical Washington lobbying Between the lines: With Democrats taking control of Congress in January, Miller will have to advance that agenda without the help of Republican majorities in either the House or Senate. Some of his plans could be pursued through executive orders by Trump. Others, including permitting reform, would require bipartisan cooperation. Reality check: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who’s in line to become House speaker in January, has said he has “zero interest” in working with Miller, whose immigration policies have made him a frequent target of Democratic attacks. Share this story.

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Could Iran-Linked Cyberattacks Reach Europe’s Homes And Critical Infrastructure? – Analysis

November 11, 2026

By Arab News

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By Jonathan Gornall

Key Takeaways:

• France has attributed a wave of remote cyberattacks that overheated supermarket freezers and threatened blood-bank supplies across Europe to Iran’s IRGC-linked Shahid Kaveh unit.
• The low-cost attacks highlight the vulnerability of interconnected cold chains, medical devices, transport and cloud-dependent services to hybrid warfare that conventional defenses cannot stop.
• U.S. and European agencies have issued urgent cybersecurity guidance while warning that simultaneous disruptions to critical infrastructure could overwhelm emergency responses.

For a few days, governments around the world clung to the hope that the bizarre series of cyberattacks on supermarket freezers across France was the work of hackers with some kind of societal grudge, or perhaps criminals planning to demand ransom payments.

But the announcement by the French government on Monday that the attack of “unprecedented scale and unprecedented aggression” was in fact the work of Iranian agents suggests a far more ominous scenario.

If the conclusion of the French security services is correct, then US allies around the world could be on the cusp of a devastating cyberwar for which they are ill-prepared, and against which conventional military defenses are utterly helpless.

French retailers were not the only victims of the attacks. The first incident, in mid-October, saw the temperature of hundreds of supermarket fridges across France raised remotely to up to 50 degrees centigrade overnight, destroying large amounts of food.

Then, at the beginning of November, an identical cyberattack hit supermarket chains in seven countries across Europe, including Belgium, Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Even more worrying than the loss of perishable food worth millions of euros, on Nov. 1 and 2 the refrigerators at three regional blood banks run by the state French Blood Establishment were also hit.

On this occasion, because the essential supplies are monitored by staff in person around the clock, blood was moved to other refrigerators and saved.

At first, suspicion fell on Russia, which is at odds with many European countries for their support for Ukraine.

But on Monday, France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, was unequivocal. “Thanks to the remarkable efforts of government agencies,” he said, speaking during the G7 meeting in Paris, “I am able to confirm that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are responsible for this attack.”

He said that in addition to summoning the Iranian ambassador to Paris to “lodge a very strong protest,” France will take “any other necessary and proportionate measures” to respond to the incident and “deter anyone who might seek to repeat it.”

Iran has dismissed the French accusations as “baseless and hostile.”

The Paris public prosecutor said that government agencies had uncovered “the use of Farsi and IP addresses traced back to devices located in Iran,” in attacks which had all the hallmarks of an Iranian cyber warfare unit called Shahid Kaveh.

Shahid (or martyr) Kaveh was named after Mohammad Kaveh, a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who was killed in 1986 during the Iran-Iraq War.

In July 2025 the unit was the subject of an investigation by DomainTools, a US cybersecurity company. This identified a sub-unit within Shahid Kaveh called Intelligence Group 13, which it described as “one of the most operationally aggressive and ideologically fortified units within the IRGC cyber arsenal.”

The DomainTools investigation even identified and named two Shahid Kaveh officials, including Hamid Reza Lashgarian, the head of Shahid Kaveh, for whom France has now issued an international arrest warrant.

Intelligence Group 13, it added, was “already known for its history of intrusions into critical infrastructure,” and DomainTools delivered what may yet turn out to have been a prescient warning.

Capable of delivering “retributive action through cyberspace,” further campaigns by the group, it predicted, were likely to include “threatening or disrupting civilian infrastructure in the US, Israel and the Gulf states.”

For Iran, hard pressed by sanctions, the appeal of such asymmetric warfare is obvious — a cheap but devastating cyberattack can potentially cause far more damage and disruption than any number of expensive drones or missiles — and governments around the world are now scrambling to react to this new form of hybrid warfare.

On Nov. 5, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, and the departments of health, transport and agriculture jointly published a fact sheet, warning operators of “critical infrastructure” to “strengthen industrial refrigeration and cold-chain monitoring systems cybersecurity.”

Chris Butera, acting assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said it was “actively tracking this threat activity. Every organization that depends on refrigeration and monitoring systems should assume it could be a target.”

It is not only supermarket freezers at risk from such attacks. Industrial refrigeration and cold-chain monitoring systems, CISA said, are “critical to multiple industries from healthcare to chemical production, food and agriculture, and transportation.”

Danielle Cosgrove, a senior adviser to the Atlantic Council’s counterterrorism project, believes further attacks can be expected, and not limited to France.

“What particularly concerns me is the potential for simultaneous or cascading disruptions,” she told Arab News. “Imagine multiple hospitals, water facilities, transportation systems or food distribution centers experiencing unexplained failures at the same time.

“Individually they’re manageable, but collectively they strain emergency services, disrupt supply chains and physical services on which entire communities and economies depend.”

Cosgrove believes France may have been targeted because “there’s been a deterioration in relations between Europe and Iran, and the EU has significantly expanded sanctions against Iran this year.”

Also, in September France announced it was sending troops and equipment to Saudi Arabia to help defend the strategically important Red Sea oil port of Yanbu from missile attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

For cybersecurity firms and national security agencies racing to identify and protect potential targets, in our super-interconnected world the task is overwhelming.

Domestic targets of disruptive attacks could include “smart” devices, such as Alexa speakers, security cameras and home-management systems controlling lighting and heating.

More seriously, disruption targeted at internet-connected vehicles, many of which now have semi-automated features such as steering and braking overrides, could prove fatal — potentially, on a mass scale.

So-called denial of service attacks on cellphone and radio networks could cripple emergency responses by police, fire and ambulance services.

In a recent report the Cyber Monitoring Centre warned that three of the UK’s most critical sectors — health, transport and finance — are reliant upon and “highly exposed” to the cloud. Most countries are equally exposed.

Electricity and water supplies, hospital systems and even medical devices are considered particularly vulnerable.

On Nov. 5, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a warning that “medical devices can be vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, potentially impacting the safety and effectiveness of the device” and issued “tips to keep your medical device secure.”

According to an advisory issued in June by IEEE, the US technology standards association, “the transformation of healthcare through connected medical devices … carries substantial cybersecurity implications that extend far beyond traditional IT security concerns.”

Devices which rely on wireless or networked connectivity considered vulnerable to cyberattacks include pacemakers, insulin pumps, cardiac defibrillators and infusion pumps.

These concerns multiply when applied to mass-transport systems, from trains to aircraft.

There is still no adequate explanation for the multiple emailed bomb threats that were received by airlines across Europe last week, affecting flights to or from more than a dozen countries.

Another vital piece of European infrastructure at risk is the digital border Entry and Exit System, introduced this year by the European Union. So far, with multiple technical glitches in the wake of its introduction, the system appears to have been self-sabotaging, leading to enormous queues at airports and causing thousands of passengers to miss their flights over Europe’s busy summer period.

In some cases, the cost for individuals has extended beyond inconvenience. On Tuesday it was reported that some travelers from Britain, which is now out of the EU, have been blocked from returning to Europe and issued with large fines because the system failed to record their entry to and exit from the bloc correctly.

So far, although European prosecutors have reportedly investigated Russian links to one of the software companies involved in the system, the EU agency responsible for border controls insists the system has not been breached by bad actors, but the potential for widespread disruption caused by malicious hacking is obvious.

In addition to being defenseless when it comes to protection from digital attacks, expensive conventional weapons systems are also considered as being on the list of vulnerable targets.

On Sunday, the commander of the UK’s recently established Defense Cyber and Electromagnetic Force revealed that specialist “hunt forces” were operating overseas in a bid to foil cyber operations.

“We are trying to hunt for our adversaries in places where they prepare before they target UK military systems,” Maj. Gen. Mike Fayers told The Times of London.

The wave of attacks on fridges and blood banks across Europe, he added, “shows you the scale and the speed of the challenge we face in the cyber domain.”

It is a challenge to which the UK government has reacted over the past month by advising citizens to stock up on three days’ worth of emergency supplies, from tinned food and water to batteries and wind-up radios, to prepare for an unspecified “difficult situation.”

During a radio interview on Oct. 23, Andy Burnham, the prime minister, said “it’s not about panicking … It’s about just taking sensible measures to have enough in the house to tide you over should there be a difficult situation.

“Unexpected events,” he added, “seem to be becoming more and more common.”

A government website, “Be ready for emergencies,” lists “some simple and effective steps you can take to be ready for emergencies and the disruption they cause,” and offered a downloadable “Be Ready Checklist.”

Predictably, UK supermarkets reported panic buying of many of the items on the list.

About Arab News

Arab News is Saudi Arabia’s first English-language newspaper. It was founded in 1975 by Hisham and Mohammed Ali Hafiz. Today, it is one of 29 publications produced by Saudi Research & Publishing Company (SRPC), a subsidiary of Saudi Research & Marketing Group (SRMG).

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Nvidia Pulled Strings to Shut Down a US Government Investigation Into Chip Smuggling

Trump secretly knew about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair for over a year.

By Victor Tangermann

Published Nov 10, 2026 2:39 PM EST

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Over the weekend, tech billionaire and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang publicly admitted that he had cheated on his wife with a suspected Chinese spy. The news sent markets rocking wildly, with investors worrying he could be forced to step down — a move that could trigger even more volatility.

One person who was seemingly unsurprised by the revelation was president Donald Trump. As the New York Times reports, he knew about the affair since at least October 2025 — well over a year ago — and decided to do nothing with that information.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of a burgeoning scandal, as a number of federal agencies have since been implicated in the very literal affair. It’s a hair-raising web of ulterior motives, business dealings, and top Trump administration officials making questionable decisions that reportedly had government workers appalled.

At the center of the story is the Commerce Department’s investigation into Singaporean data center company Megaspeed, which the US government suspected of smuggling Nvidia chips into China as early as September 2024, months before Trump took office for the second time.

Part of the Commerce Department’s investigation was looking into Megaspeed executive Alice Huang — the woman with whom Jensen Huang (no relation) had an extramarital affair with since at least June 2024, according to the NYT.

Fast forward to August 2025, when Nvidia’s general counsel Tim Teter tried to meet with the Department of Commerce officials after claiming that Trump appointee and under secretary of commerce for industry and security Jeffrey Kessler had given him permission.

It was an interaction that reportedly shocked government officials, who promptly turned down the offer to meet with Teter. Sources told the NYT that Kessler may have “opened himself to accusations of undue influence and potentially jeopardized his department’s work” on the investigation.

The ongoing probe was then dumped on the Justice Department, in an apparent effort to protect it — which then instructed the Department of Commerce to stand down, according to the NYT’s sources.

It’s a staggering series of revelations that leave plenty of glaring questions unanswered. One glaring example: why did Trump decide not to take action after being informed of Huang’s affair with a woman directly tied to a company that was actively being investigated under the suspicion of smuggling Nvidia chips into China?

As time goes on, even more top Trump officials are being implicated in the story. In separate reporting, the NYT also found that secretary of state Marco Rubio knew about a “highly classified memo” in the spring of this year that warned Trump admin officials of Huang’s affair.

Huang’s admission about the infidelity on Sunday triggered a major media circus.

“I was unfaithful to my wife,” he said in a memo to Nvidia employees. “My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”

Considering how many government officials — including the president himself — were implicated or even directly knew about his affair with an alleged spy for up to over a year, his actions may end up hurting far more people than that.

The news also couldn’t come at a worse time for the Trump administration. Democrats, who handily defeated Republicans in last week’s midterm elections, are already vowing to hold Trump’s feet to the fire and launch major probes into his “tentacles of corruption.”

Meanwhile, the president is doing a poor job of covering for the disgraced billionaire. During a press briefing on Monday, he called Huang an “amazing guy,” arguing that the CEO was “suffering greatly” after extensively cheating on his wife.

Trump also let it slip that the “FBI’s looking into it in terms of something else,” without offering any further clarification.

In other words, we wouldn’t be surprised of plenty more revelations still to come.

More on Huang: We Are Now Learning in Real Time Whether the Stock Market Cares About an AI Executive Admitting to an Affair With an Alleged Chinese Spy

Add Futurism as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting.

Victor Tangermann

Senior Editor

I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.

. Job worries persist

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Americans are getting more worried about rising unemployment, but they’re also more confident that they could find another job if they needed to, Axios’ Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown write from a new report By the numbers: The perceived probability that unemployment will rise over the next year climbed to 45.3% in October, according to the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations. That’s the highest since April 2020.Yes, but: People’s perceived probability of finding another job if they lost their current position rose to 46.5%, the highest in about a year The mixed sentiment underscores the weirdness in today’s labor market: Hiring is picking up and unemployment remains low, but it can be tough to find work. Explore the data … Go deeper.

Companies are selling your emails, Slack messages, and files to train AI — and they’re getting millions.

Wired’s Steven Levy started getting cold emails claiming that AI labs pay companies $350,000 to $1.8 million as a one-time fee for their old work records: documents, emails, Slack messages, support tickets and call transcripts.

Digging in, he found a fast-growing industry of data brokers, led by firms like Mercor, Micro1 and Handshake, that buy these archives, strip out names and other personal details, and supply them to AI developers.

Some startups now even help failing companies shut down and sell their data on the way out. When bankrupt Spirit Airlines put its digital records up for sale, the bids for 80,000 email accounts and 500 million internal messages topped $10 million.

Why the rush? AI labs have largely used up public internet data, and real workplace records show models how actual businesses run, messiness and all. Micro1’s CEO predicts companies will one day earn more from selling their workflow data than from ads. But privacy experts warn that anonymizing casual messages is hard, since employees mention things like doctor’s appointments and family problems, and workers rarely get a say in a sale that could help train AI to do their jobs.

That said, the industry’s biggest figures come from the brokers themselves and haven’t been independently verified, and Anthropic told Wired it doesn’t buy workflow data from live companies, while OpenAI didn’t respond. The Spirit sale is also on hold after the flight attendants’ union objected that it included their private information, a case that could help set the rules for everyone else.

source: Levy, S. (2026, November 6). AI companies really, really want to buy your work files and emails. Wired.