Meta is in talks to make a multibillion-dollar investment into artificial intelligence startup Scale AI, with the financing potentially exceeding $10 billion in value, sources familiar with the matter confirmed for Bloomberg. The deal would represent one of the largest private company funding events of all time and Meta’s biggest external AI investment to date.
The terms of the potential deal remain unfinalized and could still change, the sources said. Scale AI, which provides data labeling services to help companies train machine-learning models, was last valued at approximately $14 billion in 2024 during a funding round that included backing from Meta and Microsoft Corp. Bloomberg previously reported that Scale was in talks for a tender offer that would value the company at $25 billion.
This investment marks a departure from Meta’s typical approach of relying primarily on in-house research and open development strategies for AI advancement. The move aligns Meta with Big Tech peers who have made significant external AI investments, including Microsoft’s $13B+ commitment to OpenAI and billions invested by Amazon and Alphabet into rival Anthropic.
Scale AI, co-founded in 2016 by CEO Alexandr Wang, generates revenue by using contract workers to organize and tag images, text, and other data for AI training purposes. The startup reported revenue of $870 million last year and expects sales to more than double to $2 billion in 2025. Scale’s customer base includes Microsoft and OpenAI.
Meta and Scale share interests in defense technology applications. The companies already collaborate on Defense Llama, a version of Meta’s large language model designed for military use. Scale has increasingly collaborated with the U.S. government on AI for defense purposes, most recently winning a Defense Department contract for the development of AI agent technology.
Accelerated AI Strategy
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has designated AI as Meta’s top priority, with the company planning to spend up to $65 billion on AI-related projects this year. Meta has increased its AI investment forecast to $64-72 billion for 2025, up from the previous $60-65 billion projection, as it expands infrastructure and accelerates product development.
The company reports that Meta AI has reached nearly one billion monthly active users across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. The tech giant recently restructured its AI teams into two divisions: an AI products team overseeing consumer-facing features and an AGI Foundations unit focusing on core technologies including the company’s Llama models.
