Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang told employees in a memo on Thursday that he’s leaving for Meta, confirming reports from earlier in the week about his departure and a large investment from the social networking company, CNBC reported.
Meta is pumping $.14 billion into Scale AI as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, but will not have any voting power, a Scale AI spokesperson said.
“As you’ve probably gathered from recent news, opportunities of this magnitude often come at a cost,” Wang wrote in the memo that he shared on X. “In this instance, that cost is my departure. It has been the absolute greatest pleasure of my life to serve as your CEO.”
Scale AI is promoting Jason Droege, the chief strategy officer, to the CEO role. Droege was previously a venture partner at Benchmark and an Uber vice president.
The Verge reported: Meta is paying $14.3 billion to acquire 49 percent of Scale AI and hire its CEO Alexandr Wang to revamp its troubled AI efforts.
As part of the deal, Wang will report directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and remain on Scale’s board of directors, both companies announced on Thursday. Sources say Wang will lead a new AI lab at Meta tasked with building “superintelligence.” Meta spokesperson Ashley Zandy says the company “will share more about this effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks.”
Zuckerberg has been actively recruiting a new team of researchers from rival forms to join Wang’s team, according to people familiar with the matter and other press reports. The Meta founder has reached out to potential recruits directly — usually via a cold email or WhatsApp message — and lured some of them away from companies like Google with seven-and eight-figure compensation packages.
This year, Scale signed a deal with the Department of Defense for a first-of-its-kind AI agent program for US military planning. Since then, it has expanded its business with other governments, recently inking a five-year deal to provide AI tools to Qatar. The company’s work with governments in Asia and Europe could result in a sizable portion of its overall sales.
TechCrunch reported: Data-labeling company Scale AI confirmed on Friday that it has received a “significant” investment from Meta that values the startup at $29 billion. The startup also said its co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang is stepping down from his role to join Meta and help the bigger company with its AI work.
Reports indicate that Meta invested about $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in the startup, which produces and labels data that’s used to train the large language models that underpin a significant portion of generative AI development.
Meta confirmed the investment. “Meta has finalized our strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI. As part of this, we will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexander Wang will join Meta to work on our super intelligence efforts. We will share more about this effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks,” a spokesperson for Meta told TechCrunch.