Scale AI, a data-labeling company, has recently announced that it has received a “substantial” investment from Meta, which values the startup at $29 billion.
Alexandr Wang, the co-founder and CEO of the startup, has been announced as resigning from his position in order to assist Meta in its AI initiatives.
Alex Wang, 28, Founder and CEO of Scale AI
According to reports, Meta invested approximately $14.3 billion in the startup for a 49% stake.
The startup is responsible for the production and labeling of data that is utilized to train the large language models that underlie a substantial portion of generative AI development.
Meta verified the investment. “Meta has concluded our strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI.”
Alexandr Wang will collaborate with Meta to advance our superintelligence endeavors. Additionally, we will enhance our collaborative data production for AI models.
“We will provide additional information regarding this endeavor and the exceptional individuals who will be joining this team in the upcoming weeks,” a spokesperson for Meta informed TechCrunch.
Jason Droege, Scale’s present chief strategy officer, will assume the role of interim CEO. Scale AI observed that Meta’s investment will be utilized to support development and compensate shareholders and investors.
The organization underscored its independence. Wang will continue to serve as a director on the board of the data-labeling company.
This investment is a means for Meta to enhance its AI endeavors, as its competitors, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, are advancing, and the social media company’s own AI model releases are lagging behind the competition, as my colleague Max Zeff wrote recently.
Additionally, SingalFire’s data indicates that the organization lost 4.3% of its most talented employees to other AI laboratories in the previous year.
Scale AI has been utilized by prominent AI laboratories, including OpenAI, for the past several years to generate and label data that is employed to train models.
In recent months, Scale AI and its data annotation competitors have begun to recruit highly skilled individuals, including senior software engineers and PhD scientists, to produce high-quality data for frontier AI laboratories.
Last year, Scale AI secured $1 billion in funding from investors such as Amazon and Meta, resulting in a valuation of $13.8 billion.
