Sell a Shut-Down Startup's Code: Buyers and Prices

Selling a shut-down startup's code

Program pages re-read 2026-11-07

Yes, a closed startup's code and workspace exports can be sold to AI buyers, usually via a wind-down service such as SimpleClosure AssetHub. Press reports put one small company's code at about $25,000. Settle title before price: the company, a lender, an assignee or an acquirer may hold it.

Who buys code from wound-down companies?

Programs naming closed companies (fetched 2026-11-07)
Program	What it lists	Published price
SimpleClosure AssetHub	Repos with docs and tests; Slack, Drive, mail, Notion, Figma; IP; domains	Not published
micro1	A defunct-company track, next to its live-company tiers	None posted for this track

Disclosure: several of these companies run referral programs and could pay this site after a deal with a company we introduced. Rows are in no paid order, and fees do not shape the wording. We are independent of both programs; neither one endorses or sponsors this page.

What has a dead startup's code actually sold for?

One crypto founder cleared about $25,000 for the code of his closed startup, with SimpleClosure arranging the sale. MIT Technology Review carried it on 13 Oct 2026; we know of no other public price for code from a company that small.

The opposite end of the scale, per Reuters (17 Aug 2026): google put in a $10 million bid for the airline Spirit's internal records, mail and Teams chat included, ahead of Mercor at $7.5 million, pending a judge's sign-off. An airline's mail and chat archive is not a startup's repos. Read both as single data points, not benchmarks.

Who can sign after a shutdown?

The company, while it exists and still holds the assets.
A secured lender, whose sign-off is often required where venture debt took a lien over everything.
An ABC assignee, if the company made an assignment for the benefit of creditors; title then sits with the assignee.
A buyer of part of the business, where the purchase agreement swept the code in.
Board and investors, where the financing papers make a material asset sale subject to their vote.

What should you strip before anyone looks?

Same list as a live company, more urgent, because no engineer remains to fix anything later:

keys, tokens and passwords, rotated and purged from history;
customer records in fixtures, seeds, logs and ticket threads;
open-source and vendored packages, never yours to grant;
client deliverables written under an MSA;
in workspace exports, DMs and anything staff were promised would stay private.

Ownership questions get the long treatment on the open source and licensing page.

License or sell outright?

If dissolution is coming, keeping the code buys little, so a clean sale often wins. A license makes more sense for founders who may restart or hope for a second buyer. See licensing versus selling the IP.

Sources and read dates (4)

simpleclosure.com/product/assethub, as of 2026-11-07
micro1.ai/data, as of 2026-11-07
MIT Technology Review, 13 Oct 2026
Reuters, 17 Aug 2026 (via The Star)

Short answers

Can you sell a dead startup's code?

You can, once whoever now holds the IP agrees. AssetHub, SimpleClosure's wind-down asset service, takes code and workspace exports, and micro1 keeps a track for defunct companies.

How much does a shut-down startup's codebase sell for?

The single public example came from MIT Technology Review on 2026-10-13: about $25,000 for the code of a closed crypto startup. Neither SimpleClosure nor micro1 posts a price for defunct-company code.

Is Slack and Google Drive data worth more than the code?

It can sell separately; SimpleClosure lists Slack, Drive, mail, Notion and Figma. It is also thick with personal data, far more than a repo, so expect heavier cleanup and questions about what staff were promised.

We already dissolved. Is it too late?

Maybe not. It turns on where the assets went at dissolution: to an assignee, to shareholders, or nowhere. Whoever received them holds them now. The lawyer who ran the wind-down will know.

Do the investors get the money?

Sale proceeds land in the company first, and creditors rank ahead of shareholders. Whether anything trickles down to founders or investors depends on the debts. Your wind-down counsel can map it.