Alexandr Wang, CEO of ScaleAI speaks on CNBC’s Squawk Field outdoors the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 23, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang advised workers in a memo on Thursday that he is leaving for Meta, confirming reviews from earlier within the week about his departure and a big funding from the social networking firm.
Meta is pumping $14.3 billion into Scale AI as a part of the deal, and may have a 49% stake within the synthetic intelligence startup, however won’t have any voting energy, a Scale AI spokesperson stated.
“As you have most likely gathered from latest information, alternatives of this magnitude usually come at a price,” Wang wrote within the memo that he shared on X. “On this occasion, that price is my departure. It has been absolutely the biggest pleasure of my life to function your CEO.”
Scale AI is selling Jason Droege, the chief technique officer, to the CEO function. Droege was beforehand a enterprise accomplice at Benchmark and an Uber vice chairman.
A small variety of Scale AI workers will even be a part of Meta as a part of the settlement, Wang wrote.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the corporate has finalized its “strategic partnership and funding in Scale AI.”
“As a part of this, we are going to deepen the work we do collectively producing knowledge for AI fashions and Alexandr Wang will be a part of Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,” the spokesperson stated. “We’ll share extra about this effort and the nice individuals becoming a member of this crew within the coming weeks.”
Meta’s massive guess on Wang matches into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to bolster his firm’s AI efforts amid fierce competitors from OpenAI and Google mother or father Alphabet. Zuckerberg has made AI his firm’s high precedence for 2025, however has grown more and more annoyed along with his crew, significantly as Meta’s newest model of its flagship Llama AI fashions obtained a tepid response from builders, CNBC reported earlier this week.
Though Zuckerberg has historically positioned long-standing workers into high-ranking positions, he determined that the outsider Wang can be higher suited to supervise AI initiatives deemed essential for the corporate.
Scale AI counts quite a few Meta rivals as prospects, together with Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. Meta is one in every of Scale AI’s greatest shoppers.
The Scale AI spokesperson stated that Meta’s funding and hiring of Wang won’t impression the startup’s prospects, and that Meta won’t be aware of any of its enterprise data or knowledge.
