The company hopes to catch up with its rivals in the AI race.
The company has acquired nearly half of Scale AI and brought its CEO to create a new unit to develop “superintelligence.”
After the failed launch of Llama 4 models, Meta announced the purchase of 49% of Scale AI for $14.3 billion, The Verge reports. Scale CEO Alexander Wang will join Meta and head a new AI lab, reporting directly to Mark Zuckerberg.
Scale AI specializes in preparing data for training AI models – the company is a contractor for Google, OpenAI and other industry giants. Although much of the work is done by cheap labor outside the United States, Scale’s role in developing AI is critical. Wang will also retain a seat on his former company’s board of directors.
According to The Verge, Zuckerberg has been personally recruiting top scientists to the new division in recent weeks. Some of them have been offered salaries in the millions or even tens of millions of dollars. Some of the employees were hired directly from Google.
As Meta lags behind competitors – Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek – the company hopes that a strategic investment will allow it to catch up. The largest model, the Llama 4 Behemoth, has not yet been released, despite promises made in April.
In 2025, Meta plans to make its chatbot Meta AI the leading personal assistant and is working on creating a “full-fledged” artificial intelligence.