On June 2, 2025, the facade features a logo at Scale AI Headquarters in San Francisco, California.
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A few weeks later Meta It has poured $14.3 billion into scale AI and hired founder Alexandr Wang, and the artificial intelligence startup has cut 200 full-time employees or 14% of its staff.
Jason Droege, interim CEO of Scale AI, told employees in a memo Wednesday that he had taken over Wang and that the startup had reinforced its generative AI capabilities as “too fast” and created too many layers of “excessive bureaucracy.” He said AI remains a revival and remains a funded company.
“These changes will make us more agile and we will be able to respond more quickly to changing market and customer needs,” Droege wrote in a note viewed by CNBC. “This structure allows us to better serve today's customers and attract customers who have slowed down their work.”
Droege said Scale AI will “enhance significantly more staffing” across the Applications business unit later this year, including within its enterprise, the public sector and international public sector sectors.
Bloomberg was the first to report on the number of job cuts that AI has been confirmed to CNBC.
Founded in 2016, Scale AI is best known for supporting major tech companies like Openai. Google and Microsoft Prepare the data to be used to train cutting-edge AI models. According to a Reuters report, Openai has been reducing its work with Scale AI with Scale AI for the past year, and has reportedly reduced its relationship with Scale AI following its contract with Meta.
Before the layoffs, Scale AI had a global workforce of 1,400 people. Spokesman Joe Osborne said retirements were offered to affected employees. The company is also finishing work with 500 contractors out of thousands of people around the world, he said.
“We can streamline our data business, helping us move faster to Genai customers and provide even better data solutions,” Osborne told CNBC in a statement. “We also plan to invest heavily and hire large amounts of money across corporate and government AI companies.”
Meta employs billions of dollars of AI to compete better with rivals like Openai. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg chose Wang to serve as the company's Chief AI Officer and oversee the new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs. A small number of AI employees also joined the company.
In a memo on Wednesday, Droege wrote that for fired employees, “we want to expand our deepest appreciation for our valuable contributions and dedication to our company.”
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