Meta pays $15 billion for Scale AI brain: Zuckerberg’s bet on Wang
16 June 19:51
Mark Zuckerberg spent $15 billion in cash to buy a 49% stake in Scale AI. However, experts believe that the real goal of Meta is not a share in the business but the involvement of the company’ s co-founder, 28-year-old Alexander Wang, in the AI development team, terazus writes , "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
Who is Alexander Wang?
Alexander Wang heads Scale AI, a company that supplies data for training artificial intelligence models. Previously, he was known only in tech circles, but after the deal with Meta, he became one of the most expensive “talents” in the history of Silicon Valley.
Scale AI already cooperates with Meta, OpenAI, and other tech giants. The new round values the company at $30 billion, twice as much as a year ago.
“Buying talent” for a record amount
Analyst Ben Thompson called the deal “an extremely expensive talent acquisition” – when a company is bought not for a product but for people.
For comparison:
- Microsoft paid $650 million for Mustafa Suleiman from Inflection;
- Google paid $2.7 billion for Character.AI, where Noam Shazir works.
Meta outperformed everyone: the deal amount is ten times higher.
Wang will join Meta’s new artificial intelligence lab, where leading researchers are already working.
Is the bet justified?
Interestingly, Wang is not an academic scientist, but rather a tech-savvy businessman. According to The Information, he is strong at building a company and attracting partnerships, but not a leader in research.
Meta already has a bitter experience of expensive acquisitions: the co-founders of Instagram and WhatsApp left the company after the purchase. One of them, Mike Krieger, now works at Anthropic, which competes with Meta in the AI field.
Betting on “superintelligence”
Meta confirmed the deal on Thursday. The company announced the expansion of cooperation with Scale AI in the field of data generation for model training and the involvement of Wang in the work on superintelligence.
Although some see this amount as a prepayment for future contracts, most analysts believe that Meta’s main goal is to attract Wang, not to buy the company.
Zuckerberg is betting everything on the development of artificial intelligence. Only time will tell if the 15 billion is worth it.
