Discover top fintech news and events!
Subscribe to FinTech Weekly's newsletter
Read by executives at JP Morgan, Coinbase, Blackrock, Klarna and more
The deal could become one of the largest private funding events in AI history
Meta is reportedly in advanced discussions to invest more than $10 billion in Scale AI, a move that would mark the company’s largest external investment in artificial intelligence to date. According to sources cited by Bloomberg, the deal would not only deepen Meta’s ties to a key infrastructure player but also position Scale AI for a dramatic expansion, potentially doubling its annual revenue in the process.
If finalized, the deal would represent one of the biggest capital deployments ever made into a private technology company and solidify Scale AI’s role as a core supplier in the global AI ecosystem.
Strategic Bet on Infrastructure
Scale AI is known for its data labeling services, a critical but often overlooked component of the AI training process. By converting raw datasets into structured information, the company supports the development of large-scale models for major clients, including Microsoft and OpenAI.
Meta’s deepening relationship with Scale AI signals a growing recognition that successful model development depends not just on raw computing power or architecture design—but also on well-annotated data, delivered reliably and at scale.
According to reports, Scale AI generated approximately $870 million in revenue last year and is projecting $2 billion for this year. That growth trajectory, coupled with the centrality of high-quality training data, makes the company an attractive target for Meta, which is investing aggressively in building foundational AI capabilities.
From Investor to Anchor Partner
Meta is already familiar with Scale AI. The company participated in Scale’s $1 billion Series F funding round, which valued the startup at $13.8 billion. The new deal, reportedly structured as a strategic investment rather than a full acquisition, would significantly raise the stakes.
For Meta, which has been positioning its Llama family of large language models as an open-weight alternative to more centralized AI systems, this partnership could extend its reach across government and enterprise markets. Scale AI recently built Defense Llama, a military-grade LLM developed using Meta’s Llama 3 as its foundation. That collaboration hints at a shared interest in both AI research and practical deployment at scale.
Labor Scrutiny and Operational Complexity
While Scale AI is scaling rapidly, it has also faced scrutiny. The company relies heavily on contract labor to execute its labeling operations. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Labor concluded an investigation into whether Scale had misclassified or underpaid workers. No enforcement action followed, but the episode highlighted the operational risks that come with maintaining a vast, distributed workforce for manual data work.
Meta’s potential $10 billion+ investment suggests that it is either comfortable with how Scale has handled these issues or sees the infrastructure value as outweighing the risks. Either way, the deal would place Meta in a closer operating relationship with a company that is central to AI model development pipelines.
Industry Implications
The scale of the proposed investment sends a signal across the AI industry. In an environment where many companies are chasing product innovation, Meta’s focus on infrastructure and tooling represents a different kind of strategic move: one that prioritizes control over the supply chain that powers generative AI.
As AI models become more compute-intensive and data-hungry, partnerships like this one may define competitive advantage—not just in research, but in who gets to build at scale. For Meta, a deeper stake in Scale AI could offer a critical edge in building, training, and deploying next-generation models across multiple sectors.
