- Epoch AI estimated about 300 trillion tokens of public human text, likely fully used between 2026 and 2032.
- Published prices range from $0.001 per word of text to $100 to $300 per hour of film.
- Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic, about $3,000 per book, is the largest copyright settlement on record.
- One forecast put the AI training dataset market at $2.62 billion in 2024, rising to $18.47 billion by 2034.
Data supply
| Statistic | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Stock of human-generated public text | About 300 trillion tokens (90% interval 100 to 1,000 trillion) | Epoch AI, June 2024 |
| When that stock is fully used | Between 2026 and 2032 (80% interval) | Epoch AI, June 2024 |
| C4 tokens fully restricted to AI crawlers in one year | 5% or more | Consent in Crisis, July 2024 |
| Critical C4 sources fully restricted in one year | 28% or more | Consent in Crisis, July 2024 |
Prices
| Data | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Images, large archive (Freepik) | $0.02 to $0.04 per image | Reuters, April 2024 |
| Photos (Photobucket) | $0.05 to $1 per photo | Reuters, April 2024 |
| Images (Defined.ai) | $1 to $2 per image | Reuters, April 2024 |
| Short-form video (Defined.ai) | $2 to $4 per video | Reuters, April 2024 |
| Longer films (Defined.ai) | $100 to $300 per hour | Reuters, April 2024 |
| Text (Defined.ai) | About $0.001 per word | Reuters, April 2024 |
| Unpublished creator video | $1 to $4 per minute | Bloomberg, January 2025 |
| Closed startup's codebase | About $25,000 | MIT Technology Review, October 2026 |
More on AI data prices.
Deals
| Deal | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Reddit and Google | About $60 million a year | The Decoder, February 2024 |
| Shutterstock AI licensing | $104 million in a year | PetaPixel, June 2024 |
| Shutterstock initial deals | $25 million to $50 million each | Reuters, April 2024 |
| Wiley AI rights deals | $44 million expected | The Bookseller, August 2024 |
| Spirit Airlines data to Alphabet | $10 million | TravelPulse, August 2026 |
| Spirit data volume | About 100 million emails and 500 million Teams messages | TravelPulse, August 2026 |
| Troveo payments to creators | More than $5 million | Bloomberg, January 2025 |
| SimpleClosure Asset Hub | More than 150 deals; over $10 million expected by end of 2026 | MIT Technology Review, October 2026 |
| SimpleClosure deals including code or data | 47% | RuntimeWire, October 2026 |
More on AI data deals.
Companies
| Statistic | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Scale AI revenue, 2024 | About $870 million | SiliconANGLE, June 2025 |
| Scale AI contractors with a PhD | About 12% | SiliconANGLE, June 2025 |
| Surge AI revenue, 2024 | $1.2 billion | Wikipedia |
| Mercor valuation | $10 billion (October 2025) | TechCrunch |
| Mercor payments to contractors | More than $1.5 million a day | TechCrunch |
| Mercor experts' average pay | Over $85 an hour | TechCrunch |
| Appen revenue, first half 2024 | $113.4 million, down 18.4% | Staffing Industry Analysts |
| Protege funding | $25 million Series A (August 2025) plus $30 million (January 2026) | SiliconANGLE |
Market size
| Statistic | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| AI training dataset market, 2024 | About $2.62 billion | ResearchAndMarkets, May 2025 |
| Forecast, 2029 | $7.3 billion | ResearchAndMarkets, May 2025 |
| Forecast, 2034 | $18.47 billion | ResearchAndMarkets, May 2025 |
Market size forecasts vary widely between research firms and depend on what they count. Treat them as indications, not facts.
Legal
| Statistic | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Bartz v. Anthropic settlement | $1.5 billion | JURIST, July 2026 |
| Payment per book | About $3,000 | JURIST, July 2026 |
See the AI copyright lawsuits tracker.
Using these statistics
You are welcome to cite these figures. Please link to the original source and to this page. Spotted an error or a newer figure? Email us with the source.
Questions
How big is the AI training data market?
One forecast, from ResearchAndMarkets, put it at about $2.62 billion in 2024 and $18.47 billion by 2034. Other firms publish different numbers.
Will AI run out of training data?
Epoch AI projected that the stock of public human-written text would be fully used between 2026 and 2032 at current trends. Private, licensed and multimodal data extend that.
Sources
- Epoch AI: Will we run out of data? Limits of LLM scaling based on human-generated data (June 2024)
- Longpre et al.: Consent in Crisis, the rapid decline of the AI data commons (Data Provenance Initiative, July 2024)
- Reuters via The Star: Inside Big Tech's underground race to buy AI training data (April 2024)
- Bloomberg via The Star: YouTubers are selling their unused video footage to AI companies (January 2025)
- MIT Technology Review: AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train models (October 2026)
- The Decoder: Reddit signs $60 million annual training data deal with Google
- PetaPixel: Shutterstock made $104 million licensing assets to AI developers last year (June 2024)
- The Bookseller: Wiley set to earn $44m from AI rights deals (August 2024)
- TravelPulse: Google buys Spirit Airlines' data for $10 million (August 2026)
- RuntimeWire: SimpleClosure says 47% of its deals now include code or data sales (October 2026)
- SiliconANGLE: Meta reportedly in talks on $10B+ investment in Scale AI (June 2025)
- Wikipedia: Surge AI
- TechCrunch: Mercor quintuples valuation to $10B with $350M Series C (October 2025)
- Staffing Industry Analysts: Appen H1 operating revenue falls with Google contract termination (August 2024)
- SiliconANGLE: Protege raises $30M to grow its governed marketplace for AI training data (January 2026)
- ResearchAndMarkets via Business Wire: AI training dataset market opportunities and strategies to 2034 (May 2025)
- JURIST: Judge approves record $1.5 billion AI copyright settlement involving Anthropic (July 2026)