Tech titans stand to make more than $1M from every American’s data — with AI firms reaping millions more: shocking study
A recent study reveals that tech companies could earn over $1 million from each American's online data throughout their lives. AI firms may generate even higher revenues, potentially exceeding $136,000 annually per resident. The findings highlight the significant commercial value of personal data, which is often shared unknowingly by users.
- ▪Tech companies could net up to $1.08 million per US resident over 60 years from online data.
- ▪AI companies like Surge AI may earn more than $136,000 yearly per resident from personal data.
- ▪Americans' data is considered the most valuable globally, surpassing that of users in Europe and other regions.
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| Original publisher | New York Post |
| Canonical URL | https://nypost.com/2026/05/27/tech/tech-titans-stand-to-make-more-than-1m-from-every-americans-data-study/ |
| Publication time | Wed, 27 May 2026 07:30:00 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T11:32:58.864Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T11:42:46.727Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | YL1gzGDI001g |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Tech Tech titans stand to make more than $1M from every American’s data — with AI firms reaping millions more: shocking study By Alex Oliveira Published May 27, 2026, 7:30 a.m. ET See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google Tech companies could be raking in more than $1 million a pop from every American’s online data over the years — with AI firms specifically reaping potentially millions more, according to a shocking new study. Businesses that track individuals’ data stand to net up to $1.08 million per US resident over the course of around 60 years, or from ages 13 to 73, a typical person’s main Web-using years, according to the free-internet group Web3 Foundation.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at New York Post.
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