Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, Amazon and Alphabet’s Anthropic. But Meta has so far relied mostly on its own research and development of its AI technologies. It seems that the company’s increasingly fierce competition has prompted this rare move.
Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, Amazon and Alphabet’s Anthropic. But Meta has so far relied mostly on its own research and development of its AI technologies. It seems that the company’s increasingly fierce competition has prompted this rare move.
Meta is in talks to invest in startup Scale AI. The funding could top $10 billion, making the deal one of the largest ever, Bloomberg reports .
Scale AI was founded in 2016. The startup provides data labeling services to help companies train machine learning models, and has become a key beneficiary of the generative AI boom. Clients include Microsoft and OpenAI.
The startup generated revenue of $870 million last year and expects sales to more than double to $2 billion in 2025. Last year, the startup was valued at about $14 billion.
Scale plays a key role in providing companies with AI data. Because AI is only as good as the data it’s fed, Scale employs a large number of contract workers to organize and tag images, text, and other data that can then be used to train the AI.
Meta is already collaborating with Scale on a program called Defense Llama — a version of Meta’s large Llama language model designed for military use.
Scale and Meta share an interest in defense technology.
Last week, Meta announced a new partnership with defense contractor Anduril to develop products for the U.S. military, including an AI-powered helmet with virtual and augmented reality features. Meta has also granted permission for U.S. government agencies and defense contractors to use its AI models.
Scale is also working with the U.S. government to develop AI for defense purposes. This year, the startup said it had won a contract with the Department of Defense to work on AI-based agent technology. The company called the contract “a significant milestone in military progress.”
