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Title: Meta invests $14.8 billion in Scale AI and recruits its CEO

Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2025 13:00:29 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-invest...

Meta has finalized its $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, which now values
the startup that provides other companies with data labeling and model
evaluation services for AI training at $29 billion. As part of the deal,
Scale AI's founder and CEO Alexandr Wang will be joining Meta. According to
The New York Times, Wang will lead Meta's fledgling "Superintelligence lab."
A few days ago, several reports came out that Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has
been personally overseeing the recruitment for a team he's assembling to
achieve AI superintelligence.

Zuckerberg, who was reportedly frustrated by the quality of Meta's Llama 4
LLM, has been inviting potential recruits to his home and offering them
compensation packages worth seven to nine figures. Wang said in his note to
Scale employees that he's taking a few other people from the startup with him
to Meta to work on artificial intelligence. Meta has yet to formally announce
the team and to reveal what their role will be, but their ultimate goal based
on the name "Superintelligence lab" is to develop AI with intellectual powers
far beyond any human's.

This investment is Meta's second largest after its $19 billion Whatsapp
acquisition. With its $14.3 billion investment, Meta will have a 49 percent
stake on Scale but will have little control over its operations. The Times
said the companies decided on that structure to avoid being scrutinized by
regulators. Both Amazon's $4 billion investment in Anthropic and Microsoft's
close ties to OpenAI were probed by regulators, after all. Meta itself is
still battling the FTC in an antitrust case over its acquisitions of
Instagram and WhatsApp.

In his note to employees, Wang wrote that "opportunities of this magnitude,"
pertaining to Meta's investment, "come at a cost." That cost, he said, was
his departure. Wang will still serve on Scale's Board of Directors, but his
position as CEO will be taken over by Jason Droege, the startup's current
Chief Strategy Officer.

My note to Scale employees todayΓÇö pic.twitter.com/JKi35Yhvi1

ΓÇö Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) June 13, 2025

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-
tech/meta-invests-148-billion-in-scale-ai-and-recruits-its-ceo-
130029612.html?src=rss

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