Meta makes major investment in Scale AI, takes in CEO
SAN FRANCISCO
Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang poses for photos at the company's office in San Francisco, May 15, 2023.
Scale AI has announced a major new investment by Meta that values the startup at more than $29 billion and puts its founder to work for the tech titan.
Company founder and chief executive Alexandr Wang will join Meta to help with the tech giant's own artificial intelligence efforts as part of the deal, according to the startup.
Meta was reportedly pouring more than $10 billion into San Francisco-based Scale AI, and acquires its 28-year-old CEO amid fierce competition in the AI race with rivals such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft.
"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,” a Meta spokesperson said.
Meta promised more details about the move in coming weeks.
Scale AI works with business, governments and labs to exploit the benefits of artificial intelligence.
Scale AI late last year announced an artificial intelligence model built on Meta's Llama 3 model that is customized for U.S. national security missions including planning military or intelligence operations and understanding adversary vulnerabilities.
Meta will hold a minority stake in Scale AI after the investment deal closes, but an exact figure was not revealed.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg recently touted his tech firm's generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) assistant, telling shareholders it is used by a billion people each month across its platforms.
