Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly positioning Meta at the center of the superintelligence race with a bold move: acquiring a nearly 49% stake in Scale AI for approximately $14.8-15 billion. This marks the largest external investment in Meta’s history, aimed at securing a strategic foothold in the training-data and AI talent space.
Meta will be making a 15 billion investment to acquire a nearly 49% stake in Scale AI.
Scale now valued near $25b.
Scale AI Founder/CEO Alexandr Wang to head Meta’s “superintelligence” research lab.
Upto 9-figure compensation under works for Wang in pursuit of AGI.
Strategic Stakes & Scale
49% stake at nearly $14.8billion: The deal would make Scale (now valued near $25b) a major partner while bringing Alexandr Wang, its founder and CEO, into Meta’s fold to helm its new “superintelligence” research lab.
Meta is also hiring up to 50 high-ranking AI researchers, some reportedly being offered seven- to nine-figure compensation, to reinforce its team amid recent departures and the faltering launch of its Llama 4 “Behemoth” model.
Fueling AI with labeled data
Scale AI is a leader in high-quality training data, using human annotators to clean and label data, a key input for generative AI systems.
Meta aims to leap forward
Following setbacks in AI performance and talent losses (including head of research departures), Zuckerberg is betting this deal will jump-start Meta’s pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and help catch up with rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Antitrust scrutiny possible
The transaction may trigger regulatory attention since it involves sensitive AI infrastructure and consolidates power within Meta, a company already under antitrust watch for prior acquisitions like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Broader AI Context
This move fits into a wider tech-industry trend where major corporations are securing partial stakes in AI startups to gain control over talent and IP, similar to Microsoft’s deals with Inflection AI and Google’s investment in Character.AI. Yet Meta’s approach stands out: it's betting not only on talent but also on securing the vital data fueling the next wave of AI evolution.
Bottom Line
Meta’s near-$15 billion investment and recruitment odyssey signals Zuckerberg's determination to rebuild Meta’s AI clout. By anchoring itself to Scale AI’s data repository and its maverick founder, Meta is pivoting toward a long-game assault on AGI dominance. Yet with questions around labor ethics, regulatory oversight, and the feasibility of achieving superintelligence, the road ahead remains complex.
No comments yet.