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 informed staff in a memo on Thursday that he is leaving for Meta, confirming studies 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 in all probability gathered from current 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 best 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 vp.
A small variety of Scale AI staff 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’ll 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 are going to share extra about this effort and the good folks becoming a member of this group within the coming weeks.”
Meta’s large wager 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 prime precedence for 2025, however has grown more and more annoyed together with his group, notably as Meta’s newest model of its flagship Llama AI fashions acquired a tepid response from builders, CNBC reported earlier this week.
Though Zuckerberg has historically positioned long-standing staff 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 considered one of Scale AI’s largest purchasers.
The Scale AI spokesperson stated that Meta’s funding and hiring of Wang won’t influence the startup’s prospects, and that Meta won’t be aware of any of its enterprise data or knowledge.
