Scale AI confirmed a massive Meta investment on Friday, pegging its valuation at $29 billion. Meta dropped about $14.3 billion for nearly half (49%) of the data-labeling firm. The deal also means Scale CEO Alexandr Wang is stepping down to join Meta’s AI team.
Meta is doubling down on AI and wants Wang for its superintelligence projects. Scale says the investment will help pay shareholders and fuel growth but insists it remains independent. Jason Droege, Scale’s chief strategy officer, takes over as interim CEO. Wang will stay on as a board director.
Meta confirmed the move and hinted more AI news and new team members are coming soon. 
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.
Scale’s data is crucial to training large language models powering generative AI. The startup raised $1 billion last year at a $13.8 billion valuation from investors including Amazon and Meta.
The Meta deal is a direct response to falling behind rivals like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Meta lost 4.3% of its top AI talent last year, according to SignalFire.
Jason Droege added:
For the last several years, leading AI labs such as OpenAI have relied on Scale AI to produce and label data that’s used to train models. In recent months, Scale AI and its data annotation competitors have started hiring highly skilled people, such as PhD scientists and senior software engineers, to generate high-quality data for frontier AI labs.
