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Scale AI to Cut 14% of Staff After Meta's $18b Investment
The Straits Times
|July 18, 2025
Scale AI is laying off hundreds of employees from its data-labeling business, one month after Meta Platforms invested US$14.3 billion (S$18.4 billion) in the start-up and hired away its chief executive officer.
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SAN FRANCISCO -
The company cut 200 full-time employees, about 14 percent of its global workforce, and will provide severance benefits, Scale spokesman Joe Osborne said on July 16.
Scale will also stop working with 500 of its thousands of global contractors, he said.
The move is aimed at "streamlining our data business to help us move faster", Mr. Osborne said, adding that Scale plans to staff up in other areas, including enterprise and government sales.
In a note sent to Scale employees on July 16, interim CEO Jason Droege said the layoffs are a result of the data-labeling business bringing in too many people too quickly over the last year. This led to "too many layers, excessive bureaucracy and unhelpful confusion about the team's mission", Mr. Droege wrote in the memo, which was viewed by Bloomberg News.
Mr. Droege added that "shifts in market demand" also contributed to the decision to restructure.
This story is from the July 18, 2025 edition of The Straits Times.
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