Meta to pay ~$15B for 49% stake in Scale AI as CEO Alex Wang joins Meta to lead superintelligence lab
Jun 10, 2025
Key Points
- Meta pays ~$15 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI while extracting CEO Alex Wang to lead a new superintelligence lab, leaving the company nominally independent.
- Scale AI generated $870 million in revenue in 2024, expects over $2 billion in 2025, and maintains a $900 million cash position after the deal pays out investors and employees pro-rata.
- The deal follows a pattern of hyperscalers acquiring minority stakes to extract founder talent while leaving target companies with misaligned incentives between their new investor and existing customer obligations.
Summary
Meta is acquiring a 49% stake in Scale AI for approximately $15 billion. The deal pays out investors and employees pro-rata at that valuation. CEO Alex Wang is departing to lead a new superintelligence lab at Meta.
This follows a pattern established by Character AI to Google, Adept to Amazon, Inflection to Microsoft, and now Scale AI to Meta. Rather than full acquisitions, these deals leave the target company nominally independent while moving founder and executive talent into the acquirer.
Scale AI generated $870 million in revenue in 2024 and expects over $2 billion in 2025. The company has a cash position exceeding $900 million and counts leading AI labs and enterprises as customers.
The structural problem is immediate: Meta now owns half of a company with significant external customer relationships and incoming revenue, but operates under a different incentive structure than a traditional buyer. How does Scale AI's enterprise value evolve when a hyperscaler owns a majority stake with potentially misaligned commercial priorities? The company loses its independent CEO while retaining customer obligations and revenue expectations.
Character AI offers a rough precedent. The cap table was cashed out to investors and employees at a high valuation, leaving the company with a massive balance sheet and minimal preferred shareholders. The resulting entity became effectively employee-owned. Early Scale AI investors say the full deal mechanics remain opaque even to them.