Scaleai CEO Alexandr Wang spoke at CNBC's Squawk Box on January 23, 2025 outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Jerry Miller | CNBC
Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang departed for the meta with employees in a memo on Thursday, confirming his departure from the beginning of this week and reporting on his large investments from social networking companies.
Meta It has put $14.3 billion in Scale AI as part of the deal, and although it has a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, it has no voting power, said a Scale AI spokesman.
“Opens of this magnitude are often at a cost, as they probably gathered from recent news,” Wang wrote in a note he shared with X. “In this example, the cost is my departure.
Scale AI is promoting Chief Strategy Officer Jason Droege to the CEO role. Droege has previously been benchmarked and Uber vice president.
As part of the contract, a small number of scale AI employees will also be joining Meta, Wang writes.
A Meta spokesman said the company has confirmed its investment in strategic partnerships and scale AI.
“As part of this, we will deepen our efforts to generate data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to tackle our superintelligence efforts,” the spokesman said. “We'll share more about this effort and share the great people who will be joining this team in the coming weeks.”
The big bet of meta on the King fits with CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to bolster his company's AI efforts amid fierce competition with Openai and Google-Parent Alphabet. Zuckerberg made AI a top priority for his company in 2025, but is increasingly unhappy with his team, especially as Meta's latest version of the Llama AI model received lukewarm responses from developers, CNBC reported earlier this week.
Zuckerberg has traditionally placed long-time employees in high positions, but he has determined that outsider Wang is suitable to oversee AI initiatives that are deemed important to the company.
Scale AI counts many metalliabilities as customers. Google, Microsoft And openai. Meta is one of the biggest clients in AI scale.
An AI spokesperson said Meta's investments and Wang's employment would not affect startup customers and Meta doesn't know any of its business information or data.
clock: Meta is not a laguard, but one of the leaders of AI.
