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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.
Investing in scale and trying to poach its top talent is part of a plan to build a “super intelligence” lab that is better than Openai, humanity, and Google, and is also developing models that, according to one of the people, claim that they are beyond human intelligence.
Scale 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 widely viewed as a failure after low performance of key inference 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 invested heavily in the generated AI with a market capitalization of approximately 2tn. 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 in 2016, is planning to join Meta’s “Superintelligence” lab. Details were first reported by The New York Times. Details of Meta’s investment were first reported by Bloomberg and Information.
Scale’s core business uses to manually label the data that is used to train advanced AI models to ensure it is accurate.
Wang has developed relationships with Silicon Valley’s biggest investors and engineers, including Sam Altman of Silicon Valley, and positions its size to serve companies developing self-driving cars and, more recently, generative 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.
According to those with knowledge of the issue, Jason Droege, who joined Uber Eats’ Scale Scale less than a year ago, is expected to go from Chief Strategy Officer to Chief Executive Officer.
The fate of the remaining employees on the scale is less clear. Wang recently spoke about his desire to expose the scale, but a potential deal with Meta casts uncertainty on its goals.
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According to one person with knowledge of the issue, the scale is looking to expand its revenue stream following investor 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 bespoke structure used by the large tech groups is partially designed to avoid probes from regulatory authorities, according to people with knowledge of the trade. But both Google and Microsoft nevertheless face scrutiny from antitrust enforcers.
Additional Reports by Hannah Murphy
