In a significant personal and professional move for Scale AI and Meta, Alexandr Wang is stepping down. Scale AI co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang will resign from his position as the company’s chief executive to join Meta in an undisclosed role. Meta has initialed an unprecedented $14.3 billion injection into a 49% stake in Scale AI. This relationship is extremely important—Scale AI directly produces and labels the data that’s vital to training models used in countless AI applications.
Scale AI which is currently valued at $29 billion has made their name for the best-in-market data annotation service. For the past few years, it has lent its support to OpenAI by creating vital datasets. The company’s unique approach to data labeling has quickly made it an industry leader. As it stands today, it has increasingly gathered competition. Competitors in the growing data annotation space are deeply invested in hiring the most skilled workers. This includes PhD scientists and senior software engineers, illustrating an increasing need for technical talent like this.
As Wang moves to Meta, his challenge will be to bring all of that knowledge and experience to supercharging the company’s AI efforts. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta has finished its strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI. Through this, they’ll work together to create the data necessary to train AI models, and Alexandr Wang will go to Meta to work on their superintelligence initiatives. Keep your eyes on this space as we tell you more about this new initiative and the wonderful individuals coming aboard this advanced team in the weeks ahead.
Following Wang’s departure, Jason Droege, currently Scale AI’s chief strategy officer, will assume the role of interim CEO. Droege’s leadership will be crucial during this transition. His experience on the business side of this rapidly evolving AI field will be invaluable in keeping Scale AI’s innovative edge sharp.
The deal with Meta will bolster Scale AI’s strength as well. The combination would extend Appen’s reach into the growing data annotation industry. Notably, Scale AI raised $1 billion in funding last year. Further investment from household name backers such as Amazon and Meta deepened the company’s dominance, establishing it as the sector’s clear leader. In many ways, Scale AI had a tremendous year last year. It lost nearly 4.3% of its talents to AI competitors, a brain drain that underscored the cutthroat competition in the tech sector.
We’re glad to see that Meta is making this crucial investment in the right direction. It is designed to rival competitors including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic in the competition to create powerful new models. By tapping into Scale AI’s public-private partnership resources, Meta aims to not only boost its own artificial intelligence initiatives, but directly enrich its products and services.
