Meta has confirmed in prior reports about its multibillion dollar investment in Scale AI, a startup that provides data labeling services to companies such as Microsoft and OpenAI to help them train their AI models.
According to a Scale AI spokesperson, Meta is investing $14.3 billion as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup but will not have any voting power.
Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang announced via a memo that was shared on X, that he would be leaving the company to join Meta. While he, and a few other Scale AI employees have moved on to work on Meta’s AI efforts, Wang will continue to be a part of Scale’s board of directors.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the news about Wang, saying “As part of this, we will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts. We will share more about this effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks,” the spokesperson said.
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Wang also revealed that Chief Strategy Officer Jason Droege would be promoted to the role of Scale AI’s CEO. Droege was previously a venture partner at Benchmark and an Uber vice president. Wang also stated that Droege is working with the board to hire a CTO to bolster the company’s engineering team. He also added that the proceeds from Meta’s investment will be distributed to shareholders and vested equity holders.
Meta is reportedly expected to announce the company will buy a 49% stake in Scale AI in a move to accelerate its efforts towards creating “superintelligence.” Superintelligence is described as a type of AI that can perform better than humans at all tasks. Meta’s latest efforts are likely aimed at keeping up with the AI initiatives of competitors like Google and OpenAI.
As of 2024, Scale AI was valued at about $14 billion with Meta among the backers in the funding round. Meta had previously invested in Scale AI’s most recent $1 billion Series F funding round. Scale generated $870 million in sales last year and expects sales to more than double to $2 billion in 2025, according to Bloomberg. Meta has also previously worked with Scale to help train its Llama large language models, as well as to develop a “Defense Llama” AI model focused on U.S. national security.
Meta has been heavily investing in generative AI lately. In April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that the company planned to spend about $68 billion in capital expenditures this year, up from $39.2 billion 2024. The investment is focused on developing AI infrastructure such as data centers with advanced processors from Nvidia. These data centers power the training and operation of Meta’s Llama AI models.
Meta also recently struck a 20-year deal with nuclear plant Constellation Energy to power its AI initiatives. According to the deal, Meta would buy all power produced in Constellation’s plant in Clinton, Illinois, for a 20-year period beginning 2027.