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Meta will invest around $15 billion in Data Label Startup Scale AI and employ the group’s co-founders and top researchers.
The deal could be announced Wednesday, so Meta gives a 49% stake in Scale AI, which will value the startups of around $28 billion, according to people with knowledge of the issue. This marks the second year in a row where AI doubled its rating.
The investment in scale AI and attempts to poach its top talent were part of a plan to build a “Superintelligence” lab that is better than Openai, Anthropic and Google, according to one of the people.
Scale AI declined to comment, and Meta did not respond to requests for comment.
The launch of Meta’s latest major language model, the Llama 4, was overwhelmed by critics after performance was slowed with independent reasoning and coding benchmarks.
Meanwhile, competitors such as Google, Openai and Anthropic have each launched a new generation of powerful “inference” models. Meta also faces pressure from open source competitors such as China’s Deepseek, who have built a strong model at some cost.
Meta has a market capitalization of around 2tn and has invested heavily in generative artificial intelligence. However, progress has halted, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg reorganizing his efforts multiple times. Meta announced in April that she was resigning from AI Research’s vice-president, Joelle Pineau.
Alexandr Wang, a 28-year-old paper billionaire who co-founded Scale AI in 2016, is planning to join Meta’s “Superintelligence” lab. Details of Meta’s investment were first reported by Bloomberg and Information.
The core business of scale AI involves manually labeling the data that is used to train advanced AI models.
Wang has developed relationships with Silicon Valley’s biggest investors and engineers, including Sam Altman of Silicon Valley, positioning scale AI, building companies developing self-driving cars and, more recently, generating AI models.
However, his talent lies in promoting the company, not administering staff or promoting AI research, according to the multiple people who worked with him.
Those with knowledge of the issue said Jason Droege, who joined Uber Eats’ Scale Ai a year ago, was expected to go from Chief Strategy Officer to Chief Executive Officer.
The fate of the remaining AI employee measures is less clear. Wang recently spoke about his desire to open up the startup to the public, but potential deals with Meta cast uncertainty on its goals.
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According to one person with knowledge of the issue, Scale AI was looking to expand its revenue stream following investors’ concerns about intensive services. The group is increasingly focused on building custom applications for businesses and bidding for government contracts.
Last year, Microsoft paid $650 million to hire Mustafa Suleyman and his top Li, and licensed technology for the startup. Google paid $2.7 billion for similar arrangements to character AI.
The custom structure used by major high-tech groups is partially designed to avoid probes from regulatory authorities, according to people with knowledge of the transaction. But Google and Microsoft nevertheless face scrutiny from antitrust enforcers.
Additional Reports by Hannah Murphy
