Meta beefs up disappointing AI division with $15 billion Scale AI investment

Meta has invested heavily in generative AI, with the majority of its planned $72 billion in capital expenditure this year earmarked for data centers and servers. The deal underlines the high price AI companies are willing to pay for data that can be used to train AI models.

Zuckerberg pledged last year that his company’s models would outstrip rivals’ efforts in 2025, but Meta’s most recent release, Llama 4, has underperformed on various independent reasoning and coding benchmarks.

The long-term goal of researchers at Meta “has always been to reach human intelligence and go beyond it,” said Yann LeCun, the company’s chief AI scientist at the VivaTech conference in Paris this week.

Building artificial “general” intelligence—AI technologies that have human-level intelligence—is a popular goal for many AI companies. An increasing number of Silicon Valley groups are also seeking to reach “superintelligence,” a hypothetical scenario where AI systems surpass human intelligence.

The core of Scale’s business has been data-labeling, a manual process of ensuring images and text are accurately labeled and categorized before they are used to train AI models.

Wang has forged relationships with Silicon Valley’s biggest investors and technologists, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Scale AI’s early customers were autonomous vehicle companies, but the bulk of its expected $2 billion in revenues this year will come from labeling the data used to train the massive AI models built by OpenAI and others.

The deal will result in a substantial payday for Scale’s early venture capital investors, including Accel, Tiger Global Management, and Index Ventures. Tiger’s $200 million investment is worth more than $1 billion at the company’s new valuation, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Additional reporting by Tabby Kinder in San Francisco

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

Enhance your driving experience with the P12 Pro 4K Mirror Dash Cam Smart Driving Assistant, featuring Front and Rear Cameras, Voice Control, Night Vision, and Parking Monitoring. With a 4.3/5-star rating from 2,070 reviews and over 1,000 units sold in the past month, it’s a top-rated choice for drivers. The dash cam comes with a 32GB Memory Card included, making it ready to use out of the box. Available now for just $119.99, plus a $20 coupon at checkout. Don’t miss out on this smart driving essential from Amazon!

Help Power Techcratic’s Future – Scan To Support

If Techcratic’s content and insights have helped you, consider giving back by supporting the platform with crypto. Every contribution makes a difference, whether it’s for high-quality content, server maintenance, or future updates. Techcratic is constantly evolving, and your support helps drive that progress.

As a solo operator who wears all the hats, creating content, managing the tech, and running the site, your support allows me to stay focused on delivering valuable resources. Your support keeps everything running smoothly and enables me to continue creating the content you love. I’m deeply grateful for your support, it truly means the world to me! Thank you!