(Bloomberg) – A new leader in Scale AI said the social media giant, which took a 49% stake a few weeks ago, is independent of Meta Platforms Inc. and is focused on expanding its business.
Interim CEO Jason Doroge said Meta, a client since 2019, will not receive any special treatment after the $14.3 billion investment.
“There's no priority access they need for anything,” Droge said in an interview Tuesday. “They are customers and we support them in doing other customers. That's the scope of the relationship.”
Scale's 28-year-old former CEO and co-founder Alexandr Wang has left the startup to lead Meta's new super intelligence unit, part of the Facebook parent's multi-billion dollar investment to keep up with AI development. There are employees of a scale of less than one remaining to join Wang at Meta.
Wang will continue to retain his seat on the board, but Meta will not receive any representations from other boards, Droege said, adding that Scale's customer data privacy rules and governance will remain the same. The board has no access to internal customer-specific data, he added.
“There are well-maintained procedures to ensure your privacy and security (IP, data) and it's not within the entire customer base,” says Droge.
Promoted from his previous role as Chief Strategy Officer, Droege is a veteran Silicon Valley Tech executive. Prior to joining Scale, he was a partner in the venture capital firm's benchmarks and previously Vice President of Uber Technologies Inc., where he launched Uber Eats products.
Now he has an evolving scale AI business job in the increasingly crowded corner of the AI market.
For years, scale has been the most well-known name on the market to help label and annotate the data needed to build AI models. It generated approximately $870 million in revenue in 2024, and is hoping to earn $2 billion this year, Bloomberg News reported in April.
However, many companies such as Turing, Invisible Technologies, Labelbox, and Uber offer a range of services to meet the bottomless needs of AI developers for bottomless data. Scale AI rivals are currently experiencing a surge in interest from customers, and some are worried about Meta increasing visibility into the AI development process, which is only trickier.
Additionally, in light of its partnership with meta investment and scale, some of these customers have reduced ties with companies, including Openai and Google, as reported by Bloomberg and others.
While data labeling still accounts for a large part of the business of scale, Droege said startups are also expanding their application business offering services in addition to other AI Foundation models. The app business is currently earning a nine-person figure in revenue, Droege said it includes Fortune 500 companies in healthcare, education and communications without giving a specific number. The scale also counts the US government as one of its customers.
The CEO added that rather than focusing solely on Meta's Llama model, the scale will continue to work with a variety of AI models.
As Meta is fighting for top talent with other AI companies like Openai, Google and Anthropic, Droege told its employees it is a business that is undergoing a major shift in scale and that there are still “big opportunities” as the AI industry continues to grow. He also pointed to the adaptability of scale as he has taken on a variety of data-related tasks over time, from self-driving cars to generative AI, and has worked with corporate and government customers.
“It's a very agile company,” he said.
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