- Meta is negotiating a $10 billion-plus investment in Scale AI, a leader in AI data labelling.
- Scale AI generated $870M revenue in 2024 and expects $2B in 2025, serving clients like Microsoft and OpenAI.
- The investment supports Meta’s $65 billion AI push and collaboration on Defence Llama for U.S. national security.
Meta Platforms is reportedly negotiating a multi-billion-dollar investment in Scale AI, a leading startup specialising in data labelling services crucial for training artificial intelligence models.
The deal could exceed $10 billion, making it Meta’s largest external AI investment to date and one of the biggest private funding rounds in the AI sector.
Founded in 2016 by CEO Alexandr Wang, Scale AI provides data annotation for major companies like Microsoft and OpenAI. Its services help train large language models and autonomous systems by labelling vast amounts of data. In 2024, Scale generated approximately $870 million in revenue and projects to double that to $2 billion in 2025.
Meta was already an investor in Scale’s $1 billion Series F round in 2023, which valued the company at $13.8 billion. The two companies have collaborated on Defence Llama, a large language model tailored for U.S. national security, built on Meta’s Llama 3.
This potential investment aligns with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s commitment to prioritising AI, with plans to spend up to $65 billion on AI projects in 2025.
The partnership could accelerate AI development across industries and intensify competition with other tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, who have made sizable AI investments.
Scale AI’s growth and Meta’s backing underscore the increasing importance of data labelling in powering next-generation AI technologies.
Edited by Annette George
