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.

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

Meta has invested $15bn into data-labelling start-up Scale AI and hired its co-founder Alexandr Wang, as part of its bid to attract talent from rivals in a fiercely competitive market.