June 12 (Reuters) – Meta has finalized a $14.3 billion purchase of a 49% stake in data labeling startup Scale AI, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Scale AI said late on Thursday that the deal would value it at $29 billion and that the startup’s chief executive, Alexandr Wang, would join Meta to head a new team focused on artificial general intelligence, the latest twist in Silicon Valley’s race toward the cutting-edge technology.
Founded in 2004 by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow Harvard University students and originally called “TheFacebook”, the company dropped “The” from its name after securing the Facebook.com domain in 2005. It rebranded as Meta Platforms in 2021.
The Scale AI deal comes when Meta, which has a market value of $1.77 trillion, contends with antitrust scrutiny surrounding its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.
