Meta platforms Inc. is in conversations to make a billion-dollar investment in the AI start-up AI for artificial intelligence, according to the persons familiar with the matter.
The financing could exceed a value of 10 billion US dollars, said some people and make them one of the largest private financing events of all time.
The conditions of the deal have not been completed and could still change, according to the people who asked not to be identified in order to discuss private information.
A representative of the scale did not immediately answer inquiries about comments. Meta rejected a statement.
Scale Ai, whose customers belong Microsoft Corp. And Openai offers data labeling services with which companies can train machine learning models and has become an essential beneficiary of the generative AI boom. The startup was recently worth the value ofAbout $ 14 billionIn a financing round that included the support of Meta and Microsoft, it included in 2024.this yearBloomberg reported that the scale was in discussions for a survival offer that would evaluate it for $ 25 billion.
This would be the largest external AI investment of meta and a rare step for the company. So far, the social media giant has mainly dependent on its internal research and a more open development strategy in order to improve its AI technology. In the meantime, Big Tech Peers have invested strongly: Microsoft has itSet more than 13 billion US dollarsin Openaai while both Amazon.com Inc. and alphabet Have inc.set Billions in competitionAnthropic.
Part of the investments of these companies were carried out by credits to use their computing power. Meta has no cloud business and it is unclear which investments of format meta will require.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg made the top priority of AI Meta and explained in January that the company asUp to 65 billion US dollarsto related projects this year.
The company’s advance includes the effort to make Lama a global industry standard. The AI chat bot from Meta – already available on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – is used by 1 billion people per month.
Read more:The 10 defense -tech startups in 2025
Skala, co -founded with the CEO 2016Alexandr Wanghas grown quickly: the startup achieved sales of 870 million US sales last yearpreviously reported.
The scale plays a key role in the available AI data for companies. Since AI is only as good as the data that goes into it, Skala uses of contractual workers to clean up and mark images, text and other data that can then be used for AI training.
Scaling and meta have an interest in defense technology. Last week Meta announced a new partnership with the defense company Anduril Industries Inc. to develop products for the US military, including oneAI-operated helmetWith virtual and expanded reality functions. Meta has also approved the approval for US governmental authorities and defense entrepreneursUse its AI models.
The company is already working with the scale in a program calledDefense calls– A version of Metas Lama Large voice model for military use.
The scale has increasingly worked with the US government to develop AI for defense purposes. The startup announced at the beginning of this yearWork on AiAgent technology. The company called the contract “an important milestone for military progress”.
This story was originally on Fortune.com
