Prime Highlights
- Meta is set to spend some $14.8 billion to buy a 49% stake in Scale AI, a top data labeling startup.
- The acquisition represents Meta’s largest outside investment and is meant to enhance its position in the global AI competition.
Key Facts
- Scale AI made around $870 million in 2024 and is expected to generate more than $2 billion in 2025.
- The startup supplies high-quality training data used by major AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama.
- Scale AI’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, will lead Meta’s new “superintelligence” lab as part of the deal.
Key Background
Meta, the mother company of Facebook and Instagram, is gearing up for a huge investment in artificial intelligence by acquiring nearly 49% of Scale AI. The acquisition, which is estimated to be around $14.8 billion, is a part of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to accelerate the firm’s AI capabilities. Even after introducing its Llama 4 language model in April, Meta has been struggling to keep up with the AI performance of competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.
Scale AI, started by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo in 2016, is a backbone of the AI ecosystem in that it helps deliver annotated datasets—indispensable in training huge language models. Such services have made it a backbone of AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama models of Meta. In 2024, Scale AI raked in nearly $870 million in revenue and is anticipated to hit over $2 billion in 2025. It has over $900 million in reserve cash and works with large clients including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and the US government.
As part of the planned investment, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang will lead a new Meta AI unit dedicated to “superintelligence,” indicating the desire of the company to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) sooner. The in-house laboratory will operate concurrently alongside Meta’s current AI teams.
The action also positions Meta in the wider industry trend of big technology companies making large investments in standalone AI companies. The same strategy has been adopted by Microsoft with OpenAI, Amazon with Anthropic, and Google with its several AI endeavors. For Meta, it is an investment that signifies both a strategic jump and a financial move to bridge the innovation gap in AI research.
Moreover, Meta is also careful about regulatory scrutiny. By taking a minority stake, it seeks to steer clear of triggering antitrust concerns, which have haunted some of its previous acquisitions. The investment is also a subset of Meta’s larger capital expenditure plan of as much as $65 billion in 2025, much of which is aimed at AI infrastructure. This significant stake in Scale AI could have a very potent effect in speeding up Meta’s competitiveness in the rapidly evolving AI space.
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