Scale AI Inc. says its founder and Chief Executive Alexandr Wang is leaving to join Meta Platforms Inc., after confirming that the social media giant has made a “significant” investment in the company.

The red-hot artificial intelligence startup said Chief Strategy Officer Jason Droege will take over from Wang as its new interim CEO, but it didn’t say what its plans are in terms of finding a permanent successor.

The size of Meta’s investment was not revealed, but Reuters quoted two sources familiar with the matter as saying it has injected $14.3 billion into the company in return for a 49% stake in its ownership. Scale said deal values the startup at a cool $29 billion.

Wang is set to lead a new AI research lab at Meta, and he will be joined by an unknown number of his colleagues from Scale, the New York Times reported. “I have agreed that Jason Droege will step in as interim CEO,” Wang wrote in a letter to employees that was posted on X:

My note to Scale employees today— pic.twitter.com/JKi35Yhvi1

— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) June 13, 2025

Scale AI has emerged as a significant player in the AI industry, though it doesn’t develop its own AI models. Instead, it helps AI model developers such as OpenAI, Google LLC and Meta with its data labeling services, which allow them to create the vast datasets needed to teach large language models. The company was founded by Wang in 2016, and has grown rapidly in recent years, generating revenue of about $870 million in 2024.

Its growth is expected to accelerate exponentially, and Bloomberg reported earlier this year that it’s forecasting sales of more than $2 billion in 2025. Its data labeling services have become increasingly important because AI models are only as good as the data they are trained on, and the vast majority of information tends to be poorly formatted, which makes it difficult for AI algorithms to read and understand.

To solve this, Scale AI hires thousands of contract workers who “clean” this data and tag it, so AI models can understand what they’re looking at. These cleaned-up datasets are much more effective for AI training.

As Scale AI has grown its relevance, so too has Wang, who has spent the last year cozying up to various figures in the U.S. government, alongside AI industry luminaries such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang. He has notably testified before Congress, and has featured on the front cover of prominent magazines such as The Entrepreneur:

 

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A post shared by Alexandr Wang (@alexanddeer)

Wang is taking on a big responsibility at Meta, which has been pouring billions of dollars into AI research as part of its efforts to keep pace with the likes of OpenAI and Google. Although it has had success with its open-source Llama LLM models, few people have described Meta as being ahead of its rivals. Its latest Llama models have only had a lukewarm reception, and it has reportedly come unstuck in its efforts to improve on them.

As such, it’s believed that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is growing frustrated, and so he’s placing a lot of faith in Wang’s ability to advance its AI training efforts. According to The Information, Wang will head up a new “superintelligence” AI unit inside Meta that’s focused on developing “artificial general intelligence” or AGI, which is a term that refers to futuristic AI machines that can surpass human capabilities.

Not much is known about the interim CEO Droege, but he seems to have a strong background. According to his LinkedIn profile, he only joined Scale AI recently, in August 2024, having previously served as a vice president of Uber Technologies Inc. and a partner at the venture capital firm Benchmark.

In any case, Wang insisted that he’s not abandoning Scale AI by any means.

“While it is bittersweet to depart as CEO, I would never leave Scale AI behind,” he said in his letter to employees. “I’ll stay on as a director on the board, continuing to support Scale’s mission and long-term vision.”

Photo: TED/YouTube