Scale AI just landed a massive $14.3 billion investment from Meta, pushing its valuation to $29 billion. The data-labeling startup is key in training large language models behind generative AI.
Meta confirmed the deal on Friday. The social media giant now owns 49% of Scale AI. CEO and co-founder Alexandr Wang is stepping down to join Meta’s AI team, focusing on its “superintelligence efforts.”
Jason Droege, Scale’s chief strategy officer, is interim CEO. Scale will stay independent. Wang remains a board director. 
Meta plans to use the funding to pay investors and fuel growth.
Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch:
Meta has finalized our strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI. 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.
Meta’s push follows years of lagging AI releases compared to Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The company lost top AI talent last year as rivals snapped up engineers and scientists.
Scale AI serves many leading labs, producing critical data for training models. It recently hired PhD scientists and senior engineers to boost data quality.
Last year, Scale raised $1 billion from Meta, Amazon, and others at a $13.8 billion valuation—doubling in less than a year.
This deal signals Meta doubling down on AI with deep data expertise and leadership talent from Scale.
