Latest news with #Scale
India.com
18 hours ago
- Business
- India.com
Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg spends Rs 1170000000000 to hire this man, his name is.., his expertise is to...
Mark Zuckerberg is making major moves to establish Meta's role in the fast-changing world of artificial intelligence (AI). In a big deal, he has partnered with a major player in the AI world who could help push Meta's AI aspirations further. To finalize this arrangement, it is reported that Zuckerberg invested a whopping $14 billion. According to the media reports that Meta has acquired a company named Scale AI. However, the truth is that Meta simply made a large investment in Scale AI-it didn't acquire the company. If it was an acquisition, then Meta would have had to buy all shares of Scale, and all employees would have had to either receive Meta stock or cash out in some manner. This did not happen. Instead, Meta invested $14 billion in Scale AI, which raised the valuation of Scale to $29 billion, and then made Meta's stake nearly 49%. Scale is still a separate company, and its board was unchanged. However, where there is this level of influence, it is very likely that the company is going to fall directly in line with Mark Zuckerberg's vision. Alexandr Wang is the founder and CEO of Scale AI, and he was critical to making this deal happen. Wang is joining Meta but will remain on the board of Scale. With Meta and Wang's combined stake, they have potential control of Scale AI now. To put it another way, for the foreseeable future, key decisions for Scale AI could practically be dictated by Meta. The deal was so large that some thought of Meta as buying the company outright. In fact, a significant amount of the capital ultimately went to Scale AI's employees because they were able to cash out their shares-partially, of course-but retain, and cash in, a percentage of their ownership. This allowed them to profit immediately while also staying invested in the company's future growth. It's said that this idea came from Alexandr Wang himself, ensuring that his team benefitted alongside him and didn't get left behind. The most interesting thing about this acquisition is that it seems like Meta is not truly interested in Scale AI's core businesses. Scale AI is primarily a data labeler—providing the prep work for training machine learning models, which is usually a human-intensive task. It is also a low-tech task and therefore low in innovation. Scale works a lot with big clients such as Toyota, General Motors, and various governments, who want to adopt AI, except have no idea how to build AI. For Meta, a tech of its size, Scale's business does not seem to quite fit either. Meta is not building a B2B data service business, and Scale's datasets are not valuable enough as datasets to warrant a deal on that level. The real purpose for the deal, it seems, Meta wanting to acquire Alexandr Wang, the CEO behind Scale AI. This is not unprecedented. Google invested in Character AI and lured some of their best employees onto their Gemini team. Microsoft did something similar with Inflection AI. So why is Alexandr Wang so significant? In the modern tech race, the player that builds the strongest large language models (LLMs) will win the game. It is a race to claim market territory. There remain many who claim they can build LLMs, but success is impossible without the right data, enormous compute, and the ability to scale. Users will always go with the highest-performing model. When it comes to this game, second best doesn't matter. Meta has not kept pace in the AI race to date. OpenAI has already claimed the consumer software market with ChatGPT, and Google and Anthropic are established developer players. Meta has models made like Llama 2, but they have not been able to put the flag in the ground claiming 'first' in what is becoming a heated market. To this point, Meta's play has been to keep it open-source, and this was enough to gather a broad audience of developers and researchers. Now, Meta understands open source can take them only so far. They need a visionary leader capable of defining their AI future; in this case, Alexander Wang is expected to be that leader. Meta is falling considerably behind in the AI race. OpenAI has taken the consumer space using ChatGPT, and Google and Anthropic have taken the developer space. While Meta has developed some models like Llama 2, its unable to stake a claim to the top of the competitive landscape. Meta's approach thus far has been to keep everything open-sourced, and that did help garner a large community of developers and researchers,. Nevertheless, the company now realizes it cannot simply rely on open source. They need a lossy visionary leader to mold their AI future, which is why Alex Wang is in the limelight.
Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
Scale AI CEO Stresses Startup's Independence After Meta Deal
(Bloomberg) -- Scale AI's new leader said the data-labeling startup remains independent from Meta Platforms Inc. despite the social media giant taking a 49% stake just weeks ago, and is focused on expanding its business. Interim Chief Executive Officer Jason Droege said Meta, a customer since 2019, won't receive special treatment even after its $14.3 billion investment. 'There's no preferential access that they have to anything,' Droege said Tuesday in an interview, one of his first since taking the interim CEO role in mid-June. 'They are a customer, and we will support them like we do our other customers, that's the extent of the relationship.' Scale's 28-year-old former CEO and co-founder Alexandr Wang left the startup to lead a new superintelligence unit at Meta, part of the Facebook parent company's multibillion-dollar investment to catch up on AI development. Less than a dozen of Scale's roughly 1,500 employees left to join Wang at Meta, Droege said. Wang will continue to hold a seat on the board, but Meta won't receive any other board representation, Droege said, adding that Scale's customer data privacy rules and governance remains the same. The board doesn't have access to internal customer-specific data, he added. 'We have elaborate procedures to ensure the privacy and security of our customers — their IP, their data — and that it doesn't make its way across our customer base,' Droege said. Droege, who was promoted from his previous role as chief strategy officer, is a seasoned Silicon Valley tech executive. Prior to joining Scale, he was a partner at venture capital firm Benchmark, and before that was a vice president at Uber Technologies Inc., where he launched the company's Uber Eats product. Now, he has the job of evolving Scale AI's business in an increasingly crowded corner of the AI market. For years, Scale has been the best-known name in the market for helping tech firms label and annotate the data needed to build AI models; it generated about $870 million in revenue in 2024 and expects $2 billion in revenue this year, Bloomberg News reported in April. Yet a growing number of companies, including Turing, Invisible Technologies, Labelbox and Uber, now offer various services to meet AI developers' bottomless need for data. And it's likely to only get trickier, as Scale AI rivals are now seeing a surge in interest from customers, some of whom may be worried about Meta getting added visibility into their AI development process. And in light of the Meta investment and partnership with Scale, some of those customers are cutting ties with the company, including OpenAI and Google, as Bloomberg and others have reported. While data labeling remains a large part of Scale's business, Droege said the startup is also expanding its application business that provides services on top of other AI foundation models. That app business is currently making nine figures in revenue, Droege said, without giving a specific number, and includes Fortune 500 companies in health care, education and telecommunications. Scale also counts the US government as one of its customers. The CEO added that Scale will continue to work with many different kinds of AI models rather than focusing on Meta's Llama models exclusively. As Meta battles other AI companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic for top talent, Droege said he's communicating to his employees that Scale is a business undergoing a significant change, and there's still an 'enormous opportunity' ahead as the AI industry continues to grow. He also pointed out Scale's ability to adapt, as over time the company has taken on different kinds of data-related work — from autonomous vehicles to generative AI — and worked with enterprise and government customers. 'This is an extremely agile company,' he said. More stories like this are available on
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Meet Zuckerberg's brand-new AI dream team
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just hired his dream team of AI avengers, raising the stakes in the all-out battle between Big Tech companies for talent. On Monday, Zuckerberg announced the launch of Meta Superintelligence Labs, a group of star researchers that Meta poached from its AI competitors and has tasked with building a "personal superintelligence for everyone." Interest in the new unit surged after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta is offering recruits $100 million signing bonuses. But the team also offers a glimpse into what Meta is up to on AI, which it has mostly kept under wraps so far. Meta is clearly interested in using multimodal AI, which means using AI to generate images, video, and speech. It has hired multiple people with expertise in this domain. The new hires also show Meta is keeping very close tabs on OpenAI, since most of them worked on training OpenAI's latest models. (Meta wouldn't be the only Big Tech firm obsessed with beating ChatGPT.) Meta has said it will disclose other hires later, so it's still early. Regardless, the hiring blitz has commanded Silicon Valley's attention. Whatever form it takes, Meta's new team stands to shape whoever controls the future of AI. Meta didn't comment for this article. Leaders Alexandr Wang will lead the team as its Chief AI Officer, according to Zuckerberg's memo. At only 28, Wang has already cofounded and led Scale AI, a startup that helps Big Tech train their latest AI models. Meta recently invested $14 billion into Scale as part of a deal to hire Wang. Wang has a strong interest in AI progress: while he was at Scale, for example, the startup helped create an especially difficult test for AI systems called Humanity's Last Exam. Nat Friedman will co-lead Meta's lab with Wang, Zuck's memo says. Friedman is best-known as the former CEO of Github and as an AI investor who has backed startups like Stripe and Perplexity. Friedman has also served on Meta's AI advisory group since May 2024. He's dabbled in other projects, too, like funding a program to decode an ancient Roman scroll charred by the Pompeii eruption. Researchers and others Trapid Bansal is a former research scientist at OpenAI, where he co-created the company's leading o-series of AI models, Meta's announcement says. OpenAI's o3 model is touted by OpenAI as its most powerful "reasoning" model. Reasoning is a trend that's taken over AI this past year, and involves AI chatbots fleshing out their 'thoughts' before answering a question. Jiahui Yu used to lead OpenAI's perception team, which works on multimodal AI, and co-led Gemini's multimodal efforts when he worked at Google, according to his personal website. He's also helped build some of OpenAI's latest models, Meta says. Shuchao Bi also worked on multimodal AI at OpenAI, co-creating GPT-4o's voice mode. He also co-created YouTube shorts when he worked at Google, according to a Columbia University profile page. Huiwen Chang is an expert in multimodal AI who helped launch image generation for OpenAI's GPT-4o model, Meta says. Prior to that, she used to work for Google and Adobe, according to her LinkedIn profile. Ji Lin is a former OpenAI research scientist who specializes in multimodal and reasoning models, his personal website says. He's also a co-creator of several of OpenAI's latest AI models, Meta says. Hongyu Ren also worked at OpenAI, where he led a team focused on post-training AI models. "Post-training" means improving an AI model's performance after the model itself has already been created. Shengjia Zhao is a co-creator of ChatGPT and previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, Meta says. Synthetic data means using AI-generated data to make AI models smarter — another big AI trend as AI labs run out of materials to train on. Johan Schalkwyk worked as a machine learning lead at Sesame, a startup building software and hardware that can chat naturally with people. Schalkwyk previously worked at Google on speech-related technologies, including leading a 'moonshot' effort to expand Google's support to 1,000 languages, according to his LinkedIn page. Pei Sun worked for Google creating the most recent generations of AI models for Google's self-driving car subsidiary Waymo. Sun also worked on post-training and reasoning efforts for Gemini, Google's ChatGPT competitor, according to Meta's announcement. Joel Pobar worked on building inference systems for OpenAI rival Anthropic. That means making sure massively popular AI systems have enough data centers and other tools to run smoothly. Prior to joining Anthropic, Pobar worked at Meta (then Facebook) for about a decade, leading engineering teams, his LinkedIn page shows.
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Meet the people Zuck hired for his AI superintelligence team
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just hired his dream team of AI avengers, raising the stakes in the all-out battle between Big Tech companies for talent. On Monday, Zuckerberg announced the launch of Meta Superintelligence Labs, a group of star researchers that Meta poached from its AI competitors and has tasked with building a "personal superintelligence for everyone." Interest in the new unit surged after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta is offering recruits $100 million signing bonuses. But the team also offers a glimpse into what Meta is up to on AI, which it has mostly kept under wraps so far. Meta is clearly interested in using multimodal AI, which means using AI to generate images, video, and speech. It has hired multiple people with expertise in this domain. The new hires also show Meta is keeping very close tabs on OpenAI, since most of them worked on training OpenAI's latest models. (Meta wouldn't be the only Big Tech firm obsessed with beating ChatGPT.) Meta has said it will disclose other hires later, so it's still early. Regardless, the hiring blitz has commanded Silicon Valley's attention. Whatever form it takes, Meta's new team stands to shape whoever controls the future of AI. Meta didn't comment for this article. Leaders Alexandr Wang will lead the team as its Chief AI Officer, according to Zuckerberg's memo. At only 28, Wang has already cofounded and led Scale AI, a startup that helps Big Tech train their latest AI models. Meta recently invested $14 billion into Scale as part of a deal to hire Wang. Wang has a strong interest in AI progress: while he was at Scale, for example, the startup helped create an especially difficult test for AI systems called Humanity's Last Exam. Nat Friedman will co-lead Meta's lab with Wang, Zuck's memo says. Friedman is best-known as the former CEO of Github and as an AI investor who has backed startups like Stripe and Perplexity. Friedman has also served on Meta's AI advisory group since May 2024. He's dabbled in other projects, too, like funding a program to decode an ancient Roman scroll charred by the Pompeii eruption. Researchers and others Trapid Bansal is a former research scientist at OpenAI, where he co-created the company's leading o-series of AI models, Meta's announcement says. OpenAI's o3 model is touted by OpenAI as its most powerful "reasoning" model. Reasoning is a trend that's taken over AI this past year, and involves AI chatbots fleshing out their 'thoughts' before answering a question. Jiahui Yu used to lead OpenAI's perception team, which works on multimodal AI, and co-led Gemini's multimodal efforts when he worked at Google, according to his personal website. He's also helped build some of OpenAI's latest models, Meta says. Shuchao Bi also worked on multimodal AI at OpenAI, co-creating GPT-4o's voice mode. He also co-created YouTube shorts when he worked at Google, according to a Columbia University profile page. Huiwen Chang is an expert in multimodal AI who helped launch image generation for OpenAI's GPT-4o model, Meta says. Prior to that, she used to work for Google and Adobe, according to her LinkedIn profile. Ji Lin is a former OpenAI research scientist who specializes in multimodal and reasoning models, his personal website says. He's also a co-creator of several of OpenAI's latest AI models, Meta says. Hongyu Ren also worked at OpenAI, where he led a team focused on post-training AI models. "Post-training" means improving an AI model's performance after the model itself has already been created. Shengjia Zhao is a co-creator of ChatGPT and previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, Meta says. Synthetic data means using AI-generated data to make AI models smarter — another big AI trend as AI labs run out of materials to train on. Johan Schalkwyk worked as a machine learning lead at Sesame, a startup building software and hardware that can chat naturally with people. Schalkwyk previously worked at Google on speech-related technologies, including leading a 'moonshot' effort to expand Google's support to 1,000 languages, according to his LinkedIn page. Pei Sun worked for Google creating the most recent generations of AI models for Google's self-driving car subsidiary Waymo. Sun also worked on post-training and reasoning efforts for Gemini, Google's ChatGPT competitor, according to Meta's announcement. Joel Pobar worked on building inference systems for OpenAI rival Anthropic. That means making sure massively popular AI systems have enough data centers and other tools to run smoothly. Prior to joining Anthropic, Pobar worked at Meta (then Facebook) for about a decade, leading engineering teams, his LinkedIn page shows.
Miami Herald
5 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Amazon takes a big hit in the AI talent wars
Another day and another spicy development in the AI talent wars! Meta Platform's (META) Scale AI deal kicked the AI talent war into overdrive, and other tech giants are following suit. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter It's an AI hiring spree, and some of the finest tech talent could rake in record-breaking AI research salaries. Lately, if a tech giant misses the boat, that's essentially letting Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook fortune write checks to poach their best generative AI talent. Needless to say, the scramble is only getting more ruthless. Bloomberg/Getty Images Over the past few months, we've seen the hunt for the top AI researchers and engineers has turned into a full-blown AI talent war. Related: Gemini, ChatGPT may lose the AI war to deep-pocketed rival Big tech has been itching for what seems like a small pool of people who can push generative models, large language systems, and next-gen AI forward. Breakthrough AI, including lifelike chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, has made it crucial to lock down top talent fast. Meta, in particular, has been especially aggressive in chasing top AI talent. Just this month, it snagged three senior researchers from OpenAI's Zurich lab, including Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai. This comes just weeks after CEO Sam Altman blasted Meta for offering nine-figure offers to poach his team. Meanwhile, Meta locked in a massive deal with Scale AI, dropping $14.8 billion for a 49% nonvoting stake. More importantly, that deal gives Meta direct access to Scale's 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to help turn its artificial general intelligence dream into a reality. The massive Scale AI acquisition underscored the importance of valuable, top-notch, human-labeled data. Meta's big bet highlights that owning the data pipeline matters; it could potentially gain a decisive edge in building those flashy generative AI models. Meta's moves have already shaken up the whole tech space. Google's looking to cut ties with Scale to keep Meta out of its training secrets, and Microsoft's bringing in its data labeling in-house. More Tech Stock News: Circle's stock price surges after stunning CEO commentVeteran analyst drops bold new call on Nvidia stockAnalyst reboots AMD stock price target on chip update Even startups like Anthropic and xAI are looking to scoop up the best talent in competing against the big guys. According to a Reuters report, Vasi Philomin, a vice president of generative AI at Amazon (AMZN) , has left the company. Philomin told Reuters he's headed to another company without any specifics. Related: Veteran Tesla bull drops surprising 3-word verdict on robotaxi ride Philomin was one of the major forces behind Amazon Titan and Bedrock, spending eight years shaping strategy. These pillars have become critical in Amazon Web Services' push to make AI plug-and-play for any customer. Moreover, he also helped the tech giant launch Nova for multimodal tasks and Sonic for lifelike speech, keeping pace with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok. He also helped plug Anthropic's Claude (from Amazon's $8 billion Anthropic investment) into Alexa, showing off Amazon's powerful playbook. Philomin's exit comes at a time when the top AI talent turns into tech's priciest prize. The top tech leaders are reportedly using sports-style scouting to find hidden talent and dropping $100 million signing bonuses to attract talent. For Amazon, losing one of its key AI architects is a big wake-up call. Despite pouring billions into big-name deals and research efforts, Amazon is at risk of its rivals snapping up its generative AI talent. Though Rajesh Sheth (formerly of Elastic Block Store) is already handling the bulk of Philomin's work, the need for a deep bench of AI leaders ready to shape models, products, and strategy is as imperative as ever. Big picture? Philomin's move is just another sign that the top minds in the AI space hold all the cards right now. Related: Veteran analyst drops bold new call on Nvidia stock The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
