A general contractor was paid $300,000 to license its project records.

Buyers list design and CAD files too.

No buyer has published what an architecture or engineering firm was paid; that figure is from construction, on a buyer's own published case-study page.

It is not a figure for your firm, and nobody honest can promise you a number.

Is this for your company?

Tick the boxes that fit your company:

• 30 or more people
• 3 or more years in operation, and 3 or more years of records kept
• Your drawings, specifications and project files are kept in systems like AutoCAD, your file servers or cloud drives, and email
• The company owns its records: they are your own operating records, not files you hold for clients
• The company is in the US (today's buyers take US companies first)

One buyer's published criteria are, word for word, "20+ full time employees & 3+ years in operation". This checklist uses 30 or more people. Our quiz also looks for three or more years of records kept: it asks how far back your records go, not when the company started. The other lines come from our own site terms and quiz. If a box isn't ticked yet, the quiz asks about each of these.

What gets licensed: the systems you already run

Two buyers publish what they look for. We call them the second buyer, which lists AutoCAD, Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail and Outlook among the sources it buys, and the case-study buyer, the one that published the contractor's deal, whose FAQ on which companies qualify names professional services and construction among the sectors and whose home page says it buys from companies in any sector. Its guide to the data sources it covers, with notes on where to find counts, has a Design and CAD section covering design files, drawings and creative assets, and covers AutoCAD there alongside Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva. AutoCAD has no central meter, it says, so firms measure DWG folders on servers or in Autodesk Docs and report the size in gigabytes. The same guide covers Procore and Buildertrend under Field operations, Google Drive, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and Egnyte for files, Gmail and Outlook for email, and QuickBooks under accounting.

AI companies are training software to do multi-step work, and a design project is multi-step professional work. A client brief comes in. Someone develops a scheme and a drawing set is issued. An RFI comes back from the field, someone answers it against a detail, a revision follows, and a change order prices the result. Years of that, across hundreds of projects, show how a firm actually makes design decisions.

You don't need to create anything new. What a buyer looks at is the history already sitting on your servers and in your software.

For an architecture or engineering firm, that can mean:

• Drawing sets and CAD files, with their revisions
• Specifications and details
• RFIs and responses, submittal reviews and meeting minutes
• Project files on your servers or in SharePoint, Egnyte, Box or Dropbox
• Project email with clients, contractors and consultants

The guide doesn't say where RFIs and meeting minutes fit, so ask the buyer. We found no buyer page that names Revit or another BIM tool, so we don't list one here. You don't need folder sizes to take the quiz.

What never leaves your company

Your originals and your customers' identities. The buyer gets a copy of the records you agree to license, and de-identifies it. Your systems and your originals stay where they are. The second buyer says you decide exactly what is shared, and that all data is scoped, de-identified and kept confidential. The case-study buyer's home page says that, as a general term of its licenses, you keep the business and the underlying data, and that the license is defined and bounded. Its case-study page describes each license as anonymized before delivery, and it says a specialist privacy partner removes or replaces names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers and addresses before it or any buyer sees the record. Its FAQ says its license doesn't cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.

Files you hold for clients. Our own site terms go further. Records your company holds for clients under contract, records covered by professional privilege, regulated data such as patient or financial-account information, and anything you are not entitled to license must not be offered to a buyer. If in doubt, leave it out and ask your lawyer.

Nothing goes to a buyer before you see the buyer's name. If you ask us for an introduction, the buyers' names are shown to you before you click, and nothing about your answers goes to a buyer until you do. Even then we send only your quiz answers and the contact details you entered: no files, no logins, and not the estimate.

How the money works

Here is how we are paid, in the words of our fee disclosure:

If a buyer we introduce you to signs a license with your company, that buyer pays us a referral fee: a fixed amount, a percentage of the license, or both, depending on the buyer. You pay nothing, now or later, unless you and we sign a separate written agreement that says so. We may share part of our fee with the partner who sent you to us; they see only your company's name and the stage of the process.

Your estimate is never shown to a buyer. It is for you, and it stays with you.

The case-study page describes the contractor's deal as a "Perpetual exclusive license to the operational record. Anonymized before delivery." It gives no company name, headcount, years of records or systems, and it doesn't say whether the record was drawings, field records or project email.

Both buyers also publish pay ranges: typical deals from $100,000 to $2 million and above, and payouts from $100,000 to $4 million and more. Neither range is specific to architecture or engineering, and neither is a promise of what you would be offered.

Is this legal?

One buyer's page on that question calls licensing a company's own operating record an ordinary commercial deal, decided by "ownership, what the company's customer contracts say, and whether personal information can be removed." The same page says state definitions vary and your own counsel should review any license before signing.

For a design firm this is the deciding question. The same legal page says material held for a client under an agreement giving the client ownership can't be licensed whatever its value, and that only the contracts separate it from your own records. Read your contracts before assuming an archive is yours.

What the quiz asks

The quiz asks what your company does, whether it is operating, winding down or closed, where the company and the team are, how many people work there, what year your records go back to, which tools your team uses, roughly how much of your records are in English, who owns them, two yes-or-no checks, and whether you run one company or more. Round numbers are fine for headcount, and you see your range before you give an email.

Who is behind this

Kedric Van de Carr is the founder of ValueMyData.ai and is based in Texas. He built it as an independent tool that estimates what a company's operational data is worth and introduces the owner to the buyer that fits. Kedric reads every question himself. There are no sales calls: the quiz shows your range on screen, and nothing goes to a buyer unless you ask for an introduction. Questions go to kedric@valuemydata.ai.

We are not lawyers, accountants, brokers of securities or financial advisers, and nothing on the site is legal, tax, investment or financial advice. Have your own adviser review any agreement before you sign it.

Boss Financial Education L.L.C., doing business as ValueMyData.ai · kedric@valuemydata.ai · Texas