Meta Invests $14.3 B in Scale AI, Unveils Superintelligence Labs

Meta Platforms has completed a $14.3 billion cash-and-stock investment for a 49 percent non-voting stake in San Francisco-based Scale AI, valuing the data-labeling specialist at about $29 billion. The deal is Meta’s second-largest transaction after WhatsApp and cements a long-running commercial partnership between the two companies.

As part of the transaction, Scale co-founder Alexandr Wang joins Meta as chief AI officer. Wang will co-lead a newly created group, Meta Superintelligence Labs, alongside former GitHub chief executive Nat Friedman. In an internal memo on 30 June, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the reorganization unifies Meta’s foundational model, FAIR research and product teams to accelerate work on what he called “personal superintelligence for everyone.”

To staff the effort, Meta has embarked on an aggressive hiring campaign, recruiting at least 11 researchers in June alone from rivals including OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic. The Wall Street Journal and The Information report that recent hires include Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, Xiaohua Zhai, Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi and Hongyu Ren, among others.

People familiar with the negotiations say Meta has dangled compensation packages worth as much as $300 million over four years—more than $100 million in the first year for some senior roles. The packages have prompted OpenAI to tell staff it is “recalibrating” pay to stem further departures. The escalation underscores the intensifying talent war as large technology companies race to build next-generation artificial-intelligence systems.