Automotive and Aerospace CAD: Can You Sell or License It to AI?
AITrainingDataBroker.com
Automotive and
Aerospace CAD: Can
You Sell or License
It to AI?
You Sell or License
It to AI?
What a car or aircraft maker keeps in its design files, and what decides whether an AI lab may license it
Jimmy Lin
Automotive and Aerospace CAD: Can You Sell or License It to AI?
Every car and aircraft starts as a drawing, and years of changes, simulations and tests follow. So can all of that CAD data be sold or licensed to an AI lab? 2 things decide first: who owns the drawing, and export controls. Let us go through both.
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Every car and aircraft starts as a drawing, and years of changes, simulations and tests follow. So can all of that CAD data be sold or licensed to an AI lab? 2 things decide first: who owns the drawing, and export controls. Let us go through both.
Companies that design parts for cars, aircraft or spacecraft keep years of CAD files, design changes, simulation runs and test results. An AI lab may want some of it. But 2 questions come before any talk of price. Whose drawing is it? And can the file go to a foreign person at all? This is general information, not legal advice. First, let me tell you who I am.
I'm Jimmy. I have worked in data at Fortune 500 companies, as a data analyst, a data engineer and a software engineer, and I am trained in data science. I am also a Canadian military veteran, specialized in data analysis and reporting.
If you want to sell your data, I am your broker and technical advisor. I bring your data to several AI companies, and I guide your team through the technical side, including compliance. AI companies pay my fee.
Already shopping your data around? Contact us anyway. We can still work through the terms with you and help you negotiate a better price.
If you are buying data for an AI lab, I find the right data and see it through to delivery, so you can focus on AI research.
Think of the revision table on a drawing. Revision A is a first sketch, then a full assembly, then a lighter bracket, then a stress simulation, and last a test report. Each row says what changed and why, so the whole table is the story of how a part was designed. That story, and not only the final file, is what makes design data interesting. And if you want a rough idea of what yours might be worth, we built a free data value calculator, and the link is in the description.
Is anyone using this kind of data? According to a research paper on arXiv, from December 2018 by Koch and colleagues, researchers put about 1 million CAD models of machine parts into one public dataset. And according to another arXiv paper, from May 2021 by Wu and colleagues, a dataset of 178,238 CAD models also holds the steps a designer took to build each one. Both are public research and not company data, but they show that CAD models, and the steps behind them, are already used to train AI.
Now, whose drawing is it? Your own designs are yours to decide about. A customer's drawing usually is not, so you need their permission. Supplier part data depends on your contract with the supplier. And for work paid for by the government, the Defense Department's acquisition rules, section 227.7103-5, which I read in October 2026, describe 3 kinds of rights the government can hold: unlimited, government purpose or limited. Your contract says which one applies. So the first job is to match every file to its owner.
Next come the export rules, and there are 2 rulebooks. According to the State Department, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, restructured in September 2022, cover defense items and the technical data used to design, make and repair them. And the Commerce Department's Export Administration Regulations cover other items and technology, including many with everyday uses. Which rulebook applies to which file is not for me to say or to guess, so your export compliance officer or counsel decides.
Here is the part that surprises people. An export does not need a border. According to the State Department, section 120.50 of the ITAR, releasing technical data to a foreign person inside the United States counts as an export. And according to the Commerce Department, section 734.13 of the export regulations, giving technology or source code to a foreign person in the United States is a deemed export. So who can open the files matters, and not only where they are stored.
So what cannot be licensed? Files that need an export license nobody holds. A customer's drawings without their permission. Supplier part data without the supplier's okay. And anything a contract bans. We leave these out of the license to an AI lab. I do not decide which files fall into which group. Your counsel and your export compliance officer do.
That leaves real material. Once ownership is clear, the export rules are checked and the files are de-identified, an AI lab may want to license assemblies you own, design iterations, simulation runs and test data. De-identified means supplier and customer names, part numbers that point to a program, and people's names are removed first. The revision history is the valuable part, because it shows why each change was made.
I should be honest about the limits. A very small team may not have enough history. If everything is a customer's design, there may be little you can license. And if all your work is controlled defense work, a file qualifies only when the right authorization is in place. Many companies still have something, and the next questions show how to find it.
Here are 4 questions to ask about your own CAD. Whose drawings are they? Which programs have export rules attached? Who can open the files, inside or outside the United States? And how many years of revisions and tests do you keep? Take those to your export compliance officer, and you will know most of what we would ask first.
So what happens next? First, we de-identify a sample of your data. As your broker, I take that sample to several AI labs and bring back their offers, so you can compare them and choose the best price and terms. As your technical advisor, I guide your team through the export, the format and compliance. You make the final call, and we move forward only after your team signs off.
More than the final part: the revisions, simulations and tests your team already keeps may be worth something to an AI lab, once the rights and the export rules are clear.
If you run a company with 30 or more people, the data you already have could become a new revenue stream.
Want to find out more? You can visit AITrainingDataBroker.com to learn how licensing your data works.
If you have further questions, leave them in the comments, and I will answer them in the next video.
Thank you for watching.
I will see you next time.
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