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Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
- sleepyguy 1y agoMeta bought Scale for 14.3 Billion. This is the the new way Google, MS, Meta buy other companies and avoid any scrutiny. They invest huge amounts of cash and then the CEO comes to work for them. Anti Trust law is circumvent while the big companies gobble up any competition.
- leumassuehtam 1y agoI hope this time they can come up with a model at least or par with open source offerings.
- tough 1y agohey or at least not try to fake the benchmarks to fool us...
- neonate 1y agohttps://archive.md/vuq7u https://archive.md/vuq7u
- qoez 1y agoOpenAI uses scale via eg data made by humans through outlier. Part of this move could probably be seen as starving competition from data as much as buying talent at scale.
- neom 1y agoI was looking for side angles also. Thinking the size of the deal gives substantial information rights, so there is likely good visibility into competitors surface areas.
- ml-anon 1y agoEvery frontier lab has moved (or is moving) away from scale to other vendors/platforms/bespoke solutions.
- edmundsauto 1y agoHow do you know this?
- laborcontract 1y agoOne can only guess but if they were so subscribed with their existing clients why have they started focusing on much on government contracts?
- ej88 1y agocontracts are higher margin and give consistent ARR compared to data labelling
- meroes 1y agoDoesn't scale contract out/aggregate many smaller companies, and that's where the bespoke solutions are?
- dbmikus 1y agoWhat vendors or platforms are frontier labs moving to?
- az226 1y agoMercor
- TheEdonian 1y agoThese numbers are absurd
- Verdex 1y agoYeah, half of my AI skepticism isn't that the tools don't work. It's that I'm having a tough time figuring out how these things are ever going to produce ROI. Like, at some point the end product needs to be a literal genie's lamp or fountain of youth.
- cess11 1y agoScale AI has deep cooperation with military agencies and a fresh large contract with the Gulf state with the largest US military presence. It's likely they're building a new generation of combat command systems and the like, consolidation of surveillance and management tooling in the ongoing and future US wars isn't surprising.
- Verdex 1y ago[Okay so the third option that I thought of but decided not to put down was: literal genie's lamp, fountain of youth, or robot army. Because then who cares if you collapse the economy if AGI, you'll be safe with your robot army. Not particularly happy that this option is potentially not far from the mark.]
- cess11 1y agoNot sure what you mean, but it's not like the militarisation of "tech" is a secret. The current US administration is bragging about its militaristic totalisation efforts: https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment_201_executive_innovation_corps_to_drive_tech_transformation https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment...
- b0a04gl 1y ago[dead]
- seydor 1y agonew ai avatars for your metaverse glasses . stock will surely be up
- bix6 1y agoThis is a weird deal? Meta buys a non-controlling stake and says no customers will be affected but the CEO and others are leaving Scale for Meta. Meta also says they won’t have access to competitor data but at 49% ownership they get major investor rights? Sounds like an acqui-kill to me?
- indy 1y agoWould buying 49% prevent any government investigations into the deal?
- bix6 1y agoYeah 50% may have triggered antitrust
- atlasunshrugged 1y agoIt does seem likely that the deal was at least partially structured to avoid antitrust scrutiny but my impression is that under the DMA/DSA (I can never keep track of which is which) in Europe Meta is technically a gatekeeper and has different obligations so I'll be curious to see what happens there
- paganel 1y agoIf this is marketed as a strategic acquisition for the national interest of the US tech industry in order to counter-act the Chinese trying to catch up on AI then nothing of the sorts will happen.
- rodonn 1y agoIt might reduce scrutiny, but not completely prevent it. Clayton act says "No person engaged in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital and no person subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission shall acquire the whole or any part of the assets of another person engaged also in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce, where in any line of commerce or in any activity affecting commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly."
- vessenes 1y agoLargest acquihire ever, beating out oculus/carmack, also done by Zuck. Meta is not afraid to build when competing, so I propose this is interesting.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI agree. Slightly amused at the running from one side of the boat to the other. So we're done with the Metaverse now? (Or maybe the metaverse needs AI bots running around … perhaps scalping tickets or something. In fact I get it though — they're looking for the Next Big Thing — as all big companies are. I even think they're on to it this time. The whole metaverse thing was just so obviously misguided, misspent capital.)
- vessenes 1y agoI have a little metaverse experience, and they do relate. If you think of Zuck as a meta strategist, and expand out to where he seems to believe things will be in 20 years, a couple things seem obvious: * mediated (AR/XR) environments are almost certainly going to be much more popular / used than today, likely in some new device form factors * Demand for 3D type content and audio and text content will therefore be rising dramatically Perhaps the least realistic part of Ready Player One was the infinite AAA content floating around; pre gen-AI it was like you’d need 3/4 of the worlds population making digital assets for the other 1/4. Gen AI changes this, a lot. Avatars, agents, all those are deemed likely to be more compelling as video / imagery gets super cheap to generate as text and audio are now. The bitter lesson of the AR/XR space is that — hardware is hard. I think it’s a mistake to scoff at something both Apple and Zuck are pouring billions into a priori — even if the markets don’t seem to be working out as expected right now. I’m writing this on ipadOS beta 26, and the interface tells me that Apple is committing to visionOS type interactions over the next 10 years; the design iconography from the AVP is everywhere now. Upshot - generative environments, agents and etc. seem likely to me to be big someday — companies with major AR/VR hardware divisions and more data than us don’t seem to be giving up on the space. Practically speaking, a lot of people really want to be able to ‘live’ at least part of the time in a generative reality that they connect to emotionally. I think we’ll see a lot more of it. All that said, just like there are AI hype waves, and now one that looks like it ‘stuck’, metaverse has these periods. Still an open question if / when one will stick. But I think it’s likely to in the long term.
- willsmith72 1y agoDid they just buy a "head of AI" for 14b?
- jstummbillig 1y agoOr did they buy the well that all their competitors drink out off?
- Aperocky 1y agoI have a hard time believing that the soa labs are drinking from that well.
- UncleOxidant 1y agoAnd didn't they already have a "head of AI" who had actual bona fides? (LeCun)
- sgarland 1y ago> “…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.” Gavin Belson would be proud. Or at least steal the quote; same thing, really.
- cornfieldlabs 1y agoBelow article has interesting info but it's paywalled. Does anyone have a way to read this? https://www.theinformation.com/articles/fame-feud-and-fortune-inside-billionaire-alexandr-wangs-relentless-rise-in-silicon-valley https://www.theinformation.com/articles/fame-feud-and-fortun... Edit (as per wikipedia): "Lucy Guo was fired two years later in 2018." She was a co-founder.
- makestuff 1y agoWill Employees be able to gain any liquidity from their options, or is this technically another round with no tender offer?
- sctb 1y agoFrom Wang's note to employees (https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/1933328165306577316 https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/1933328165306577316): > Today's investment also allows us to give back in recognition of your hard work and dedication to Scale over the past several years. The proceeds from Meta's investment will be distributed to those of you who are shareholders and vested equity holders, while maintaining the opportunity to continue participating in our future growth as ongoing equity holders. The exceptional team here has been the key to our success, so l'm thrilled to be able to return the favor with this meaningful liquidity distribution.
- stingraycharles 1y agoFrom my perspective, Meta is doing pretty reasonable with their AI compared to eg Apple. What is their end goal with AI? I understand Google, Anthropic and OpenAI try to cater to a certain audience with their AI products. I understand the way Apple wants (but is failing) to integrate AI into their products. What’s Meta’s strategy here? What’s their vision?
- kypro 1y agoI don't know how much adoption they've seen in the real world, but they have some really cool models outside of gen-ai. Stuff like: - https://segment-anything.com/ https://segment-anything.com/ - https://dinov2.metademolab.com/ https://dinov2.metademolab.com/
- tomrod 1y agoRobotics and world-interaction, if LeCunn is to be taken as the primary proselyter.
- api 1y agoWhen a company reaches a certain size they basically become a bank. Meta owns a bunch of social media properties and the long term prognosis for that industry is not great. It would make sense to get into other areas if they can do it.
- notfried 1y agoI don't really think Meta ever had a vision beyond "Facebook is a social network to connect people". Since then, their strategy has primarily been driven by their fear of being left behind, or of losing the next platform war. Instagram, Whatsapp, Threads, VR, AR, and now AI, they all weren't driven by a vision as much as it was their fear of someone else opening a door to a new market that renders them obsolete. They are good at executing and capturing the first wins, but not at innovating, redefining a market, or pushing the frontier forward; which is why they eventually get stuck, lose direction, and fall behind (Tiktok, Apple Vision Pro, AI).
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- christkv 1y agoMeta just opened up an opportunity for number two in this space to grow even if it's only to hedge against Meta.
- Illniyar 1y agoMatt Levine suggested that this was an aquihire. And the weird setup where they only buy non voting shares is to not trigger any regulatory review
- Peroni 1y ago$14.3 Billion seems excessive for it to be a pure aquihire play. There's undoubtedly some IP acquisition (or at least exclusive access to certain IP) involved.
- tgv 1y agoI know "excessive" is technically correct, but at the same time it seems an understatement.
- owebmaster 1y agoTheir fantasy money from ScaleAI’s inflated valuation will easily balance this out on the books.
- nikcub 1y agoIt's about 0.85% of Meta's market cap - less than the 1% they paid for (granted, all of) Instagram. They also paid about 1% of market cap for Oculus ($2b into a ~$220b market cap) Seems about par for Facebook when it comes to company-shifting acquisitions.
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- ldjkfkdsjnv 1y agoWord on the street is scale.ai knows which data sets/data approaches anthropic and openai used to do their RL reasoning training. Meta is paying for that know how/information.
- pu_pe 1y agoPeople are saying this is an acquihire, and the article states that Scale AI's CEO will join Meta in a "top leadership role" in their new Superintelligence lab. Does this mean Lecun is stepping down?
- zozbot234 1y agoSuperintelligence, really? I'm really looking forward to their "super intelligent" stochastic parrots — or stochastic llamas, as the case may be. The only thing "super" here is the ludicrous hype. It's totally out of control.
- KaoruAoiShiho 1y agoThis is a new organization, Lecun leads the FAIR team which is more focused on basic ML research than this ASI focused team.
- bgwalter 1y agoIs Wikipedia is correct, Scale AI does not work on AGI at all, but has clearly pivoted to surveillance and military applications like so many others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI A drone army would come in handy for suppressing dissent in the Gulf monarchies or in LA.
- ipsum2 1y agoIncorrect, they work with military as well as AI labs like OpenAI.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- paxys 1y agoSpending $15B to hire a 28 year old to build you some AI is certainly a move. You can call Zuck many things, but "afraid to take risks" isn't one of them.
- akudha 1y agoWhat is the big risk here? He has the cash to burn and he has full control of his position. Nothing will happen to him if he wastes a few Billions. He is not some poor single mom who has to decide between fixing her car and paying for kid’s Christmas presents
- paxys 1y agoSpending $15B is a risk. Yes they have the money, but we're talking a quarter of Meta's annual income. That's not nothing. And money concerns aside, Meta needs to be a major player in AI. If they have made the wrong bet with Scale AI & Wang then the company will suffer in the long term.
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoIt's surely mostly a stock deal though, right? So they won't take the same hit to free cash flow that they might otherwise do. Still a lot of money and I'm not sure it's worth it. Might be more like Whatsapp than Instagram, tbh.
- paxys 1y agoIt's a funding round. Scale doesn't need Meta stock, they need cash to burn.
- HDThoreaun 1y agoMeta is doing $10 billion in buybacks a quarter. Cash vs stock deal doesnt make a difference I think
- coliveira 1y agoYou're thinking in the wrong scale. Meta is a $1.7T company, for them a $15B investment is less than 1% of the company. In the span of a year, this is negligible money.
- deviation 1y agoReminds me of "Don't dig for the gold, sell the shovels". Could also be read: > Meta spends 10% of last year's revenue to acquire 49% of a top AI data company and poach their leadership, to ensure they are a key player in what could be a ~5-trillion dollar industry by 2033. Meta has a history of this. Acquiring Oculus (and leaning in on VR), Ray-Ban partnership (and leaning in on AR)... etc. These all just seem like decisions to ensure the company's survival (and participation) in whatever this AI revolution will eventually manifest into.
- vonneumannstan 1y agoOf course the actual shovels are GPUs in this case... so it makes your analogy even stranger.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> the actual shovels are GPUs in this case This deal brings into focus whether the shovels are data or GPUs. Advantage to data comes, surprisingly, in perishability: a GPU fleet remains cutting edge for only one product cycle.
- CamperBob2 1y agoIn the gold-rush metaphor, the data is the cyanide and dynamite.
- ml-anon 1y agoWhat top AI company? Certainly not Scale, right? You realise that frontier labs don't really use Scale anymore exactly because they can't be trusted not to sell their secret-sauce human data collection protocols. No-one in the industry takes this guy seriously.
- fnikacevic 1y agoIt's always a warning sign where the only thing I know about a CEO is how many podcasts and media events they do each week, and nothing about their business.
- laborcontract 1y agoUntil now I've actually been a believer in the amount of money that Zuck has poured into metaverse investments. I'm not a believer of the metaverse per se, but a believer that innovation takes unafraid capex. The last thing you want to be is scared money like microsoft who chose to scuttle the hololense project over the thought of spending a couple extra billion dollars on it. But this deal really has left me with my head scratching. Scale is, to put it charitably, a glorified wrapper over workers in the Philippines. What meta gets in this deal is, in effect, is Alexander Wang. This is the same Wang who has said enough in public for me to think, "huh?" Said a lot of revealing stuff like at Davos (dont have the pull quotes off the top of my head) that made me realize he's just kind of a faker. A very good salesman who ultimately gets his facts off the same twitter feed we all do. On top of what makes this baffling is that Meta has very publicly faced numerous issues and setbacks due to very poor data from Scale that caused public fires in both companies. So you're bringing in a guy whose company has caused grief for your researchers, is not research nor product oriented, and expect to galvanize talent from both the inside and outside to move towards GAI? What is Mark thinking? Zuckerberg seems to have had all the pieces to make this work but I'm a lot less confident if I'm a shareholder now than a week ago. This is a huge miss.
- gitfan86 1y agoSam Altman is a huge risk to META. He has similar morals to Zuck and a much better technical team. If OpenAI turns on the slop generator, they could hit Facebook and Instagram hard. Wang is probably smart enough to help navigate that risk.
- dkdcio 1y ago> said enough in public for me to think, "huh?" I love this phrasing
- az226 1y agoThis is exactly my take. Are you me? :-) Well said!
- ml-anon 1y agoThe only way to understand this is by knowing: Meta already has two (!!) AI labs who are already at existential odds with one-another and both are in the process of failing spectacularly. One (FAIR) is lead by Rob Fergus (who? exactly!) because the previous lead quit. Relatively little gossip on that one other than top AI labs have their pick of outgoing talent. The other (GenAI) is lead by Ahmad Al-Dahle (who? exactly!) and mostly comprises of director-level rats who jumped off the RL/metaverse ship when it was clear it was gonna sink and by moving the centre of genAI gravity from Paris where a lot of llama 1 was developed to MPK where they could secure political and actual capital. They've since been caught with their pants down cheating on objective and subjective public evals and have cancelled the rest of Llama 4 and the org lead is in the process of being demoted. Meta are paying absolute top dollar (exceeding OAI) trying to recruit superstars into GenAI and they just can't. Basically no-one is going to re-board the Titanic and report to Captain Alexandr Wang of all people. Its somewhat telling that they tried to get Koray from GDM and Mira from OAI and this was their 3rd pick. Rumoured comp for the top positions is well into the 10's of millions. The big names who are joining are likely to stay just long enough for stocks to vest and boomerang L+1 to an actual frontier lab.
- coliveira 1y agoThese people should better make a lot of money while they can, because for most of them their careers may be pretty short. The half life of AI technologies is measured in months.
- paxys 1y agoThis is exactly why Zuck feels he needs a Sam Altman type in charge. They have the labs, the researchers, the GPUs, and unlimited cash to burn. Yet it takes more than all that to drive outcomes. Llama 4 is fine but still a distant 6th or 7th in the AI race. Everyone is too busy playing corporate politics. They need an outsider to come shake things up.
- dongobread 1y agoThe corporate politics at Meta is the result of Zuck's own decisions. Even in big tech, Meta is (along with Amazon) rather famous for its highly political and backstabby culture. This is because these two companies have extremely performance-review oriented cultures where results need to be proven every quarter or you're grounds for laying off. Labs known for being innovative all share the same trait of allowing researchers to go YEARS without high impact results. But both Meta and Scale are known for being grind shops.
- hoofhearted 1y agoThis is a very interesting buy because Scale AI has been spamming anyone and everyone on freelancer platforms; and they don’t have a very good reputation online so far from people they have contracted with. Just go look at what people say about them on Reddit. It’s rare to find anything positive, or even a single brand champion that had some sort of great experience with them.
- paxys 1y agoJust like Uber, Doordash & co don't have a good reputation among their contract workers. The entire business model is based on exploitation of labor. That doesn't mean it isn't valuable (in a capitalist sense).
- hoofhearted 1y agoNo, those were entirely different user experiences when the services you mentioned were gaining traction and finding product market fit. UberCab and Palo Alto Delivery were both services that had great success at user experiences for everyone involved including drivers, riders, small businesses, people ordering food. These experiences created brand champions who went out and raved about these technological innovations nonstop. I don’t see any mentions of any positive experiences with Scale Ai here on HN or Reddit.. maybe that’s the reason behind the acquisition?
- paxys 1y agoPeople on HN aren't the ones driving Ubers, so I'm not sure what experiences you are expecting to hear about. Go talk to actual drivers and you'll find that things aren't exactly rosy.
- noosphr 1y agoDriving for Uber in 2010 was amazing. There were plenty of people on HN who signed up for the app to drive people back home before and after work. Being able to see your car move in real time on the uber database with >2s lag between your car GPS and customers phone was magical in a way that's hard to describe today.
- krosaen 1y agoAnyone know what scale does these days beyond labeling tools that would make them this interesting to Meta? Data labeling tools seem more of a traditional software application and not much to do with AI models themselves that would be somewhat easily replicated, but guessing my impression is out of date. Also now apparently their CEO is leaving [1], so the idea that they were super impressed with him doesn't seem to be the explanation. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/13/scale-ai-confirms-significant-investment-from-meta-says-ceo-alexandr-wang-is-leaving/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/13/scale-ai-confirms-signific...
- knuppar 1y ago> Also now apparently their CEO is leaving Leaving to join "Meta's super intelligence efforts", whatever that means.
- laborcontract 1y agoThis is by all indications the world's most expensive acquihire of a single person. Reporting has been that Zuckerberg has seen Wang as a confidant of sorts, and has proposed a vision of AI that's said to be non consensus.
- krosaen 1y agobut did you see that now Wang is leaving as part of this?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- paxys 1y agoHe is leaving to join Meta.
- laborcontract 1y agoHe is leaving to now work at Meta.
- ForgedLabsJames 1y agoMeta really love going all in with the hype tech hey!
- vonneumannstan 1y agoI'm really not sure why they are acquihiring a digital sweatshop owner. It's not obvious that Wang has any special insight or expertise related to building a Superintelligence other than Data Annotation...
- ahoyhoy 1y agoScale's data annotation platform Outlier is managed with tragicomic, DOGE-style incompetence. It has been in failure mode since around January.
- 7moritz7 1y agoHe knows what data cohere, openai and anthropic commission which is a major advantage and I doubt they'll continue relying on scale ai
- vonneumannstan 1y agoI assume you could individually poach entire teams away from all 3 companies for much less than $100M so this is still a strange move.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rokhayakebe 1y agoMy mother is 73. She uses Meta AI a lot. Her friends do too. Maybe Zuck knows what he is doing.
- paxys 1y agoBecause he put a big "AI" button on every single one of Meta's apps and surfaces. I'd bet that most of the usage is accidental. Great way to show inflated user counts in your earnings reports and get some directors promoted, sure, but not a long term strategy.
- twelve40 1y agoTrue, that AI button is shoved pretty violently in unexpected places, and surprises me in an unpleasant way, since I've never considered Meta itself as a place to search for information, let alone something trustworthy. But this is actually interesting. Asking for medical information in the past was the realm of Google Search, now a combo of Google/Gemini/Chatgpt/whatever. Could it be they are going to try to bite off a chunk of that market? kind of like how they chose not to compete with Google search in 2010's. But now are taking another pass at it?
- moralestapia 1y ago>She uses Meta AI a lot. How?
- rokhayakebe 1y agoHealth questions or things she would usually call us for. When I was surprised to learn her friends use it.
- moralestapia 1y agoInteresting, thanks!
- b0a04gl 1y ago[dead]
- htrp 1y agoMeta is effectively getting access to all of the training data that every other frontier Lab ever requested from scale so that they can recreate it. unclear whether wang is bringing a copy of all the data that they previously labeled as part of this 49% stake.
- the_mar 1y agoscale does not own the data of most of it’s large customers.
- _sword 1y agoSounds like meta gets the data and also anything they can scrape together about what the other labs have been doing to get better results than meta
- tzury 1y agoThis is as bold as Instagram and WhatsApp were at the time, typical Zuck move, most likely a successful story, perhaps bigger than the other two. See, when he paid $1 billion in 2012 for a 7 employees company, everybody thought it is the biggest mistake he made. Who he paid $21.8 billion in 2014 for 55 employees size messaging company, people said similar things, but both turned out to be a great success in market dominance. Scale serves the top tier AI companies, and Alexandr is a prodigy by all means, so hell ye. Unlike many other cases where M&A simply killed the companies / product, here it is going to be power multiplier, Meta's data to scale and back, will make scale better and meta's AI better.
- code_for_monkey 1y agoso is this going to be the next big thing, like the metaverse? Werent we all supposed to be paying virtual rent?
- iamleppert 1y agoHas anyone actually used Scale AI products? Their labeling tools are 100% pure trash.
- the_mar 1y agoscale is no better or worse than any other labeling vendor.
- oxqbldpxo 1y agoWCGW with Mark in charge of Ai? Nothing. How could a little "Like" button end up destroying world peace? Absurd.
- diggan 1y ago> end up destroying world peace ... What world peace are you speaking of?
- sensanaty 1y agoIs this the same company that has their recruiters (or whatever the hell they're called) spamming me incessantly via all my emails, even the throwaway ones I've used literally one single time that they presumably got via some unscrupulous means, about "annotating" data for training AI? And their rate is something laughable like 20 euros an hour? We truly live in a clown world when a casual $14B is being chucked at garbage like this, I hope those Iranian nukes turn out to be real this time and I get to be the first in line to be cleansed via nuclear fire, 'cause I'm tired boss.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- epsilonthree 1y agoI work at Meta. Scale has given us atrocious data so many times, and gotten caught sending us ChatGPT generated data multiple times. Even the WSJ knew: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/alexandr-wang-scale-ai-d7c6efd7 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/alexandr-wang-scale-ai-d7c6efd7 https://archive.is/5mbdH https://archive.is/5mbdH We intentionally didn’t use them at all for Llama 2 and mostly avoided using them for Llama 3, but execs kept pushing Scale on us. Total mystery why until now, guess this explains it.
- sensanaty 1y agoInteresting that your comment got flagged almost instantaneously
- dang 1y agoIt was initially killed by a software filter. Those are tuned more strictly for (some) new accounts. It had nothing to do with the content of the comment, though admittedly that is less "interesting". For anyone who doesn't know: if you see a comment which is [dead] but shouldn't be, you can vouch for it (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch).
- laborcontract 1y agoHow do you feel about him now becoming an exec?
- dchftcs 1y agoI guess Mark Zuckerberg likes Alexandr Wang a lot. They have a lot in common. They both value intensity and are willing to engage in morally dubious tactics. The culture of Scale sounded quite a bit like Meta these days (and not Meta in mid 2010s) and may indeed be what Zuckerberg envisioned Meta's culture should be. So even if Scale's product isn't the best, it probably seemed like delegating to a copy of Zuckerberg himself, so it just "felt right". However, a top research lab needs to be competitive yet still have an environment that fosters intellectual honesty. Meta Gen AI did not seem like that, and I don't think Scale's culture is like that either.
- adamredwoods 1y agoThe goal of AGI for these companies is to replace human workers.
- paxys 1y agoFunny because Scale AI relies entirely on human workers (for data labeling).
- adamredwoods 1y agoBut that's not their long-term goal.
- HardCodedBias 1y agoA few possibilities: 1. Mark no longer wants to run the company and he is picking alexander wang. 2. Mark believes that Ai is the top priority, his teams have failed, (this is all clearly true so far) and he wants completely change the org structure of his AI efforts (not recommendation but everything else). 3. Mark wants to cut off the supply of information to other labs 4. Mark thinks that full access to ScaleAi's data could accelerate their research and somehow they couldn't do this with a less expensive options. (2) seems semi-reasonable (in that Meta has failed with near infinite resources) but acquiring a handful of execs for this price seems absurd. (3) seems like a conspiracy theory and the technology is moving away from this path of data collection, although it is still important at this very moment. (4) Maybe. I guess some combination of all 4 is plausible. But the amount of money seems, frankly, absurd.
- eitally 1y agoI wonder if it's really an adjacent benefit to your #4: Mark doesn't just get full access to Scale's data, they also get access to an army of >100,000 data labelers to use however they want.
- v5v3 1y ago(5)Retail therapy. Zuck is depressed as he wants to be liked and the Theo Von interview recently was a disaster. You and I may buy a new tech toy for $100 to cheer ourselves up, he spent a bit more :-)
- foobiekr 1y agoWell if there's one thing the AI segment is lacking, it's funding.
- visarga 1y agoWhy link to this copyright maximalist site with paywall? They argued against copyright in 2001 (NYT vs Tasini) when it was in their favor, and recently pro copyright (NYT vs OpenAI) because it was in their ..favor. They want to put restrictions on our creativity, to extend copyright from expression to abstractions. I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole. https://apnews.com/article/meta-ai-superintelligence-agi-scale-alexandr-wang-4b55aabf7ea018e38ffdccb66e37cf26 https://apnews.com/article/meta-ai-superintelligence-agi-sca...
- 1024core 1y agoI haven't read the article yet (I'm about to) but I'm curious: what are Yann's views on this? He's been pretty vocal that LLMs won't lead to AGI. Edit: read the article. No mention of Yann. What kind of journalists are these people, to not get viewpoints from different angles? They might as well just reproduce press releases and be done with it.
- crowcroft 1y agoI'm not sure if that's really relevant? You can believe LLMs won't lead to AGI and still believe that spending billions to have a best in class model will allow you to make products that will recoup that investment.
- tummler 1y agoMeta buying their way into trends generally seems to pan out (WA, Insta, Oculus). Any reason to think this will be different? I’m not familiar with Scale but the particulars of this deal seem odd to me.
- sampl3username 1y agoWhy is people letting these unelected companies reshape the world?
- ralfd 1y agoHonest question: Do you want elected politicians reshape the world?
- sampl3username 1y agoI'd prefer that to companies.
- CamperBob2 1y agoReally? Interesting. What country do you live in?
- sampl3username 1y agoSpain.
- guluarte 1y agoOutlier isn't worth 14.3 billion...
- owebmaster 1y agoTheir gains from ScaleAI’s next raise will pay this
- thecrumb 1y agoMeta developers can't even make Marketplace search work properly. I can't seem them making a 'super intelligence' LOL
- Atotalnoob 1y agoIsn’t that why they are paying scale?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- islewis 1y agoThis appears to be a psuedo-acquisition, but with a strange format to appease regulators. Will this still be an exit event for employees or do they get screwed here?
- molsongolden 1y agoSounds like they're getting paid based on his note to employees: > "The proceeds from Meta's investment will be distributed to those of you who are shareholders and vested equity holders [...] The exceptional team here has been the key to our success, so I'm thrilled to be able to return the favor with this meaningful liquidity distribution." https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/1933328165306577316 https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/1933328165306577316
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tibbar 1y agoYes, it is very good for employees and ex-employees.
- nrmitchi 1y agoHonestly if this acts as a liquidity event for a whole bunch of current employees, while at the same time giving off "Meta hand picked the CEO and whoever they felt were the best AI engineers and jumped ship" energy, I wouldn't be tooo surprised if current "scaliens" view this as the inflection point, and decide it's not worth staying for the other ~51% of their shares.
- Imnimo 1y agoI just don't get why Scale and/or Alexandr Wang are so important to Meta. Like sure, data is good and all, but does Scale really bring something so unique and valuable to the table? What vision or insight does Wang offer that's worth so much?
- lyime 1y agoGood hire.
- ahmed_ssh 1y agoI have been working at Scale for 2yrs now. Their data is shit, the majority of the contributions live in the 3rd world and all of them use gpt and other big models. I'm eagerly waiting for the AI hype to disappear to see all those corporates lose their money.
- mparnisari 1y agoYou want your own employer to fail?
- theGnuMe 1y agogpt laundering as a service?
- ahmed_ssh 1y agoExactly
- varjag 1y agoWhat's up with metaverese Zuck?
- jakupovic 1y agoSo Scale needs $14.3B to run their models/etc. That's what I read into this.
- Henchman21 1y agoIt doesn’t seem at all wise to give the least ethical among us access to a super intelligence. Not trying to single out Zuck specifically, though his challenges with ethics do seem well documented. Rather, I’m speaking about the entire industry. Humanity isn’t demanding this, only those at the top seem to want it, and they seem to want it so they can keep more share of the pie for themselves, and decrease the size of everyone else’s share. It feels like we’re at a very ugly crossroads.
- bamboozled 1y agoSorry, can you tell me what’s new ?
- Henchman21 1y agoSure! It seems they have an actual chance to succeed in their anti-people crusade. That is markedly different than in the past. Just my 2-cents. Meaningless in the face of it all :)
- throwawaybob420 1y agoBut how else would I be able to generate highly realistic photos of shrimp Jesus? Surely that’s more important than everything else…
- Rebuff5007 1y agoI dont understand, why would they make a super-intelligence group instead of something more ambitious like a super-super intelligence group or supreme-mega-intelligence group? Zuck is clearly not thinking this one through.
- belter 1y agoIt's just the same team with a new Slack channel.
- kylebenzle 1y agoPosting for postarity, I long said everyone needed to stop everything they were doing and we all put 100% of our effort towards AI. If AI is solved (we don't have AI yet) then many other problems get solved too.
- siliconc0w 1y agoSeems like desperation to convince the industry that they're still relevant in AI after the fiasco that was Llama4. Scale doesn't create foundational models, they compile proprietary datasets that everyone has already licensed and trained on - not a lot of reoccurring value. Maybe this slows down competitors a bit but I doubt it.
- very_good_man 1y agoFacebook invests in the US Army
- v5v3 1y agoAlex Wangs x account for any one wanting to read the thoughts of a $14bn mind https://x.com/alexandr_wang https://x.com/alexandr_wang
- nrmitchi 1y agoWang has, seemingly, spent just as much time and energy over the last couple of years on PR stunts and publicity than on Scale itself. Between testifying to congress about how China is an AI risk (duh) and how AI is important (obviously), putting out press releases about joining boards of large orgs, and getting himself invited to trumps second inauguration. A high-billion-dollar story-headline framed as "Meta paying $14 BILLION for this one guy" is the same. It very much seems it's been an investment in getting himself to be more of a "household name in AI". That is exactly what Meta needs (or at least thinks it needs) now. I very much believe that there is very little moat in AI (currently, and in the forseeable future short some underlying hardware/etc breakthrough), and the success (from a consumer perspective) will come down to which of the big-cos (Facebook v Amazon v Google v OpenAI v Anthropic/Claude) consumers trust more. Zuck is, to put it mildly, *not* a trustworthy name for Meta to associate to leading the product that they want consumers to trust and depend on for their entire lives. Whether or not Wang has any more qualifications than 1) is somewhat of a recognized AI name, and 2) is okay at speaking confidently on topics someone briefed him about, I don't think really plays much into this. If he needs help/assistance/etc with any of the meta scale/politics/management/etc, zuck can buy that for him. What Zuck can't seem to buy (for himself) is some level of trust.
- moeadham 1y agoLooks like they are distributing a dividend to shareholders (14$, well below $25), and then diluting everyone. Has anyone heard a bull case on being a minority shareholder in Scale.ai after this deal? Seems a bit like late stake investors are getting thrown under a bus.
- divtiwari 1y agoFrom Wang's Wikipedia: "During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang was roommates with his friend Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI." Two mutli-millionaires being roommates sounds pretty strange/funny/weird to me.
- mus_hafa 1y agoGet Plus You said: Usernames can only contain letters, digits, dashes and underscores, and must be between 2 and 15 characters long. Please choose another. Create Account username: ChatGPT said: It looks like you're trying to create a username and the system has specific rules: Allowed characters: Letters (A–Z, a–z) Digits (0–9) Dashes - Underscores _ Not allowed: Spaces Symbols like @, ., !, #, etc. Length: Must be between 2 and 15 characters. Here are some username ideas that follow the rules: Sky_Rider tech-nerd23 LunaWolf ace_92 PixelDash Neo_Trek JetStream7 coder_boy Jade-Dragon blink42 Would you like suggestions based on your name, interests, or a theme (e.g. gaming, tech, fantasy)? You said: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab (nytimes.com) 467 points by RyanShook 5 days ago | 474 comments ChatGPT said: Thanks for sharing the headline: "Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab (nytimes.com)" Here's a quick breakdown of what that means (based on the title alone — I can't access the article directly without a link or more detail): Key Takeaways: Meta (Facebook’s parent company) is making a massive $14.3 billion investment. The investment is going to Scale AI, a company that specializes in training data for machine learning — essential for large AI models. The goal is to accelerate work on "superintelligence", a term often used to describe AI that surpasses human-level intelligence. This could be Meta's answer to OpenAI’s frontier work, Anthropic, or Google DeepMind. Why It’s Important: $14.3B is a huge amount even by tech standards — signaling Meta’s very serious intent to dominate AI. It could boost Scale AI into a top-tier partner for training large-scale language models or AGI systems. Meta might be aiming to own the data pipeline, reducing dependence on open-source or third-party training datasets. What's Scale AI? Known for labeling data for AI training. Works with enterprises and governments. Critical infrastructure in training powerful, accurate models. If you want a deeper analysis or verified summary from the actual article, feel free to drop the link or ask for a source check — I can pull live data if needed. You said: Qya shar kron mojha pasa melga os pa ChatGPT said: Agar aap "Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI" jesa news ya article share karte ho kisi platform (Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) par, to aapko seedha paisa milne ka koi tareeqa nahi hota — jab tak aap kisi monetized platform par kaam nahi kar rahe. Lekin paisa kamane ke kuch halal aur real tareeqay hain aise news ko use kar ke: 1. YouTube Shorts ya TikTok Video Banao Aise AI news par short informative videos banao. Agar views aayein to monetize ho sakta hai. Example: “Meta ne AI mein 14 billion dollar kyun lagaye?” 2. Blog ya Website Par Article Likho Agar apki site par traffic aata hai, Google AdSense se paisa milta hai. Aap news ka Urdu mein ya easy explanation likh sakte ho. 3. Facebook Page ya Instagram Reels AI news daily share karo + voiceover do. Page grow hone par sponsorships mil sakti hain. 4. Picoworkers ya Microtask Sites Wahan par kabhi kabhi task hotay hain: “News share karo” ya “video dekho.” Direct paisa milta hai har task ka (₹20–₹100 tak). 5. Affiliate Marketing Agar aap AI tools promote karte ho (jaise: ChatGPT, Jasper, Grammarly), to Meta jese news se link karke promote karo. Agar aap chahte ho ke main aap ke liye koi real earning ka plan banaun (news sharing ya AI topics se), to mujhe batao: Aap ke paas Facebook page ya YouTube channel hai? Aap Urdu ya English mein kaam kar sakte ho? Aap mobile use karte ho ya laptop? Phir main aap ke hisaab se best plan bataunga. You said: To is ander kya likho ChatGPT said: Agar aap "Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI" wali news ko WhatsApp, Facebook group, ya kisi earning platform (jaise Picoworkers, SproutGigs) par share karna chahte ho — to aapko sirf link bhejna kaafi nahi hota, balki uske sath interesting aur simple language mein text likhna padta hai jo logon ka attention le. Example Text (Urdu + Roman Style): Meta ne 14.3 Billion Dollar invest kiye AI company mein! Facebook ki parent company Meta ne AI mein dhamaka kar diya — ab Scale AI ke sath mil kar Superintelligent AI banane ka plan hai! Yani agla zamana sirf AI ka hoga! Janiye puri detail yahan: [ Link dalen yahan] Example (English + Short Style): Meta just invested $14.3B in Scale AI! This could change the future of superintelligent AI forever. Read what’s happening [Your Link Here] Tips: Emojis ka use karo — attention ke liye Roman Urdu ya simple English use karo Jis platform pe share kar rahe ho, uska mood samjho (e.g., news group vs earning task) Agar aap chahein to mujhe batayein: Aap kis platform par share karna chahte ho? Kis language mein audience zyada active hai? Main uske mutabiq ready-made text de dunga copy-paste ke liye. You said: Ap bana kado ChatGPT said: Bilkul! Yahan maine aap ke liye 3 ready-made versions bana diye hain jo aap copy-paste kar ke Facebook, WhatsApp, Picoworkers, ya kisi bhi jagah share kar sakte ho: Roman Urdu Version (Popular Style) Meta ne 14.3 Billion Dollar invest kiye Scale AI mein! Facebook wali company ab Superintelligent AI banane ja rahi hai Socho future mein AI insanon se zyada intelligent hoga! Puri detail yahan par dekho: [Yahan link dalo] English Version (Simple & Professional) Meta just invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI! They're planning to build a superintelligence lab that could change the future of AI forever. Must-read update for tech lovers! [Insert your link here] Earning Platform Task Style (Picoworkers etc.) Task: Read & Share this breaking AI news Meta has invested $14.3B in Scale AI to build a superintelligence lab Check article and share it: [Insert your link here] Done? Submit screenshot as proof Aap sirf link replace kar den: [Insert your link here] → is jagah apna NYTimes ya koi bhi article ka link daal den.
- mus_hafa 1y agoGood
- mus_hafa 1y agoEvery day for good us