Meta finalises $14.3bn Scale investment, hires its CEO

Meta Platforms Inc has finalised a multi-billion-dollar investment in Scale AI and recruited the startup's chief executive officer to join its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts — an unusual deal that signals a heightened push by the social media giant to catch up on AI development.

- KURT WAGNER, RACHEL METZ & SHIRIN GHAFFARY

Meta said Thursday that it has backed Scale, without including details. The size of the investment was $14.3 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal values the startup at more than $29 billion, including the money raised, Scale said in a blog post Thursday. As part of the investment, Scale CEO and cofounder Alexandr Wang (pictured) is set to take on a new role at Meta on its AI team. Wang will join the company's "superintelligence" unit, focused on building AI that performs as well as humans, a hypothetical advance often referred to as artificial general intelligence. Wang will stay on at Scale as a board member.