Meta is on the verge of finalising a major investment in Scale AI, with reports indicating the sum could exceed $10 billion. This would represent not only the largest external artificial intelligence investment by Meta’s parent company but also rank among the most substantial private funding rounds ever recorded.
Scale AI, led by CEO Alexandr Wang, specialises in data annotation services essential for training AI models. Its clients include industry leaders such as Microsoft and OpenAI. The company’s workforce largely consists of contractors responsible for much of the data labelling, a practice that recently attracted scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Labor. However, the investigation into whether Scale AI misclassified or underpaid these workers was ultimately dropped.
The company has exhibited quick financial growth, generating around $870 million in revenue last year and projecting revenues to reach $2 billion this year, according to Bloomberg. Prior to this potential deal, Meta had already invested in Scale AI’s $1 billion Series F funding round, which valued the firm at $13.8 billion. Scale AI also partnered with Meta to develop Defense Llama, a large language model tailored for military use and built on Meta’s Llama 3 architecture.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has emphasised the importance of AI to the company’s future, with plans to dedicate up to $65 billion to AI initiatives in 2025. This shows a departure from Meta’s previous focus on internal AI research and open development, reflecting a more competitive approach to securing cutting-edge AI technology.
By committing such a considerable sum to Scale AI, Meta aims to strengthen its position within the AI data ecosystem, which is critical for advancing the capabilities of sophisticated AI models.