Milliarden-deal: Meta announces introduction to Scale AI

Meta announced on Thursday that it supports Scale without giving details. According to the insider, the amount of the investment was $ 14.3 billion. The new assessment of $ 29 billion includes the upgrade capital, said the insider, who asked not to be mentioned.

As part of the investment, Alexandr Wang, CEO and co-founder of Scale will take over a new position in the Meta AI team. Wang becomes part of a new « superintelligence » department within the company, which focuses on the development of AI – a hypothetical progress that is often referred to as « artificial general intelligence ». Bloomberg News had previously reported that Meta was in negotiations with Scale.

Superintelligence project

« Meta has completed our strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI, » said a spokesman for the company. « As part of this, we will deepen our cooperation in creating data for AI models, and Alexandr Wang will come to Meta to work on our superintelligence projects. We will report more about these efforts and the great people who join this team in the coming weeks. »

Meta will take over a share of 49 percent in the company, according to the source. Meta acquires shares without voting rights.

This year CEO Mark Zuckerberg made Ki the focus of his social media company and hired several billion dollars for AI-related infrastructure and personnel. However, Zuckerberg is increasingly frustrated by the progress of Meta after the introduction of the latest large voice model of the company, Llama 4, which was generally considered disappointing.

Zuckerberg attracts with lucrative salary packages

In the months since the introduction in April, Zuckerberg has followed a more practice -oriented approach. He has made the recruitment of AI experts and scientists priority for the new superintelligence team, received applicants in his houses in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto and even redesigned the office of Meta so that the new group is closer to his desk, as Bloomberg News reports.

Meta and Zuckerberg have offered lucrative salary packages to collect top researchers from Alphabet Inc.s Google and the start-up sesame AI.

With the Scale deal, Zuckerberg, which rarely makes major investments in start-ups, seems to be pursuing a strategy similar to Amazon.com, Microsoft and Google. Each of these large technology companies has concluded contracts with prominent AI start-ups and recruited some of their top talents.

A procedure that some are regarded as an attempt to avoid the associated official control with great acquisitions. Meta recently was in front of a federal court to defend itself against monopoly allegations of the Federal Trade Commission.

Tailored AI applications for companies and authorities

In contrast to the other start-ups, Scale does not focus on the development of large voice models. Scale was founded in 2016 and offers data services with which companies such as Meta and Openai can train and improve their AI systems. The company also develops tailor-made AI applications for companies and authorities.

Cooperation with Scale could enable META to make up for Google and Openai in the field of AI development and to deepen its relationships with the US government, since the company is increasingly investing in defense technology. The 28-year-old Wang is an experienced networker who has built up relationships with legislators, including through lobbying.

Scale also records strong business development. The start-up generated sales of around $ 870 million in 2024 and expects sales of $ 2 billion for this year, as Bloomberg News reported in April. Scale was previously assessed in a financing round last year with around $ 14 billion.

« It is clear that Meta pursues this aggressively because they don’t want to stay behind, » said Shweta Khajuria, analyst at Wolfe Research, in an interview. « Such an aggressive investment not only means that it is important for the company, but also that they need it, » she added, noting that the deal signaled that Meta « has no confidence in its ability to stay at the top ».