Meta proposes to invest more than $10 billion in Scale AI, a new record of private financing.

On 8 June, according to a source quoted by Bloomberg, Meta Platforms (Facebook parent company) is negotiating with Scale AI, an artificially intelligent start-up, with a planned investment of over $10 billion, which could be one of the largest transactions in the history of private enterprise financing.

According to informed sources, the negotiations between Meta and Scale AI are at an advanced stage, with an investment valuation likely to exceed $10 billion, making Meta the largest external investment in the AI area to date. The terms of the transaction have not yet been finalized and there are certain variables, which both parties refuse to comment on.

Founded in 2016, Scale AI is a company that focuses on data labelling and AI model training services, and its clients include tech giants such as Microsoft and OpenAI. In 2024, the Scale AI valuation had reached $13.8 billion, with revenue of $870 million in 2023, and was expected to double to $2 billion in 2025.

The core business of Scale AI is to provide high-quality data labelling services for the AI model, covering data types such as images, text, videos, etc., and to help businesses train machines to learn about models. It also supports the exchange of data and information among AI researchers in over 9,000 cities around the world. With the rise of the generation of AI, Scale AI became the industry’s “heroes behind the scene”, providing key data support for models such as the ChatGPT in OpenAI.

Meta ‘ s investment is aimed at enhancing the training capacity of the large open source model LaMA through Scale AI ‘ s data service, with the goal of making LLamar a global AI standard. The analyst described Scale AI as “the cornerstone of AI” and its data-processing capacity was essential for enhancing model performance. Meta ‘ s investment is not only in terms of Scale AI ‘ s technical capabilities, but also in terms of its potential in the field of defence science and technology.

Meta’s investment is an important step in its AI strategy. In 2025, Meta ‘ s AI advertising revenues are expected to exceed $50 billion, while LaMA ‘ s open-source ecology is attracting global developers. The Scale AI data service will provide Meta with higher-quality training data to enable it to make breakthroughs in the generation of AI and multimodular models (e.g. AI glasses).