Scale co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang will lead Meta’s new superintelligence unit.

Meta’s investment is the latest attempt by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to give his $1.8 trillion social media company an edge in the race to develop more powerful AI models. Zuckerberg has been trying to poach top researchers and engineers from rival groups as he seeks to build out a new “superintelligence” team.

Startup CEO joins Meta's secretive AGI team as Zuckerberg scrambles to close the AI gap with Google and OpenAI

OpenAI plans to continue working with Scale AI after rival Meta on Friday agreed to take a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup for $14.8 billion, OpenAI's CFO Sarah Friar told the VivaTech conference in Paris.

Scale AI built its business on the labor of gig workers. But those workers likely won't benefit from their new deal with Meta.

Dystopian thriller “Soylent Green” ends with the hero discovering that the mystery food that sustains New York’s citizens, and whose name the movie bears, is actually made of human beings. Reports that Meta Platforms may acquire 49 per cent of artificial intelligence company Scale AI for $15bn illustrate a similar plot twist. AI, too, is people.

Meta’s decision to create an ambitious new “superintelligence” AI research lab headed by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang is a bold bid for relevance in its fierce AI battle with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.