Meta has finalized a huge $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, a fast-growing company that builds tools to train AI systems.
The tech firm now has a 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI after investing a significant figure in the company. The deal, which values Scale AI at nearly $29 billion, marks one of the largest strategic moves in Meta’s bid to lead the next generation of AI innovation.
The social media giant also hired Scale AI’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, to join its top AI team, making this one of its boldest moves yet to improve its AI technology and catch up with competitors.
Meta brings in Scale CEO to lead AGI projects
Wang founded Scale in 2016 and turned it into a top-tier AI data company used by big names like Meta and OpenAI. He will now help lead the “superintelligence unit” at Meta to create machines that reason and solve complex problems as well as or even better than people can.
Bringing Wang on board could help the social media giant keep up with the growing competition. regulatory pressure because he has business instincts and deep connections in the tech and government world.
Meta launched its latest large language model, Llama 4, in April, but it fell short of expectations and was seen as trailing behind models from OpenAI and Google. In response, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI his top priority. He’s been actively recruiting top scientists and engineers, offering generous pay packages to help position Meta as a leader in the future of AI.
Zuckerberg wants the best tools and minds to help it reach its goal of building powerful, human-level AI before anyone else does. He has gone as far as rearranging the firm’s office spaces so that the new superintelligence team sits closer to his own desk. The company is also pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI hardware, research, and talent recruitment to compete with rivals and show the world that it can still lead in cutting-edge tech.
Meta follows rivals by making its biggest startup deal since WhatsApp
Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI is its largest startup deal since acquiring WhatsApp in 2014. The move marks a strategic shift for the company, which has traditionally built most of its technology in-house to avoid major external investments.
This new deal shows Meta closely follows other major tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. These firms have gained access to talent and technology by partnering with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and various other AI labs without owning them outright and triggering antitrust investigations.
ScaleAI focuses on the data and infrastructure that make AI models work and helps companies gather, organize, label, and feed massive amounts of clean, accurate data into AI systems so they can learn better and faster.
Demand for the company’s services is growing rapidly as Scale expects to reach $2 billion in 2025 after achieving $870 million in revenue in 2024 alone.
Wolfe Research analyst Shweta Khajuria said Meta’s aggressive approach suggests the company knows how much is at stake. “They don’t want to be left behind,” she explained, adding that this is not just a strategic choice but a necessity for Meta’s future.
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