Scale AI
Data foundry for AI: labeling, RLHF, and defense AI infrastructure; partially absorbed into Meta in 2025
PRIVATESan Francisco, CA~900Founded 2016~$1.6B equity (+ $14.3B Meta strategic stake) raised$29B implied (Meta Jun 2025 deal) valuationscale.com
SectorsAI Software
Market Metrics
Valuation (Jun 2025 Meta deal)
$29B implied
Meta paid $14.3B for 49% non-voting stake
Meta Strategic Investment
$14.3B
Largest single private-AI strategic stake in history at announce
Annualized Revenue (2024)
~$870M
Per The Information; growing toward $1B+ run-rate in 2025
DoD Thunderforge Award
$250M
CDAO prime contract Mar 2025 for joint-warfighter agentic AI
Updated at 2025-Q2
Funding History
Total raised: ~$1.6B equity (+ $14.3B Meta strategic stake) · Latest valuation: $29B implied (Meta Jun 2025 deal)
| Round | Date | Amount | Valuation | Key Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 2016 | $4.5M | - | AccelIndex |
| Series A | 2017 | $18M | - | Index (lead) |
| Series B | 2018 | $18M | - | Founders Fund (lead) |
| Series C | Aug 2019 | $100M | $1B | Founders Fund (lead) |
| Series D | Dec 2020 | $155M | $3.5B | Tiger Global (lead)WellingtonGreenoaks |
| Series E | Apr 2021 | $325M | $7.3B | Dragoneer (lead)GreenoaksTiger GlobalWellington |
| Series F | May 2024 | $1B | $13.8B | Accel (lead)CiscoIntel CapitalAMD+4 more |
| Meta Strategic | Jun 2025 | $14.3B (49% non-voting stake) | $29B (implied) | Meta Platforms |
Updated at 2025-Q2
Product Specifications
| Product | Type | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Scale Data Engine | Human + model labeling for vision / text / RLHF | GA |
| Scale GenAI Platform | Fine-tuning, eval, alignment for enterprise customers | GA |
| Scale Donovan | Defense / national-security AI agent platform | GA (JWCC and DoD-accredited) |
| SEAL Leaderboard | Public LLM benchmark on Scale-curated tasks | GA |
| Scale Studio | Synthetic data + simulation for autonomy and robotics | GA |
| Outlier | RLHF / expert-feedback marketplace for skilled annotators | GA (rebrand of Remotasks) |
Updated at 2025-Q3
Partnerships & Investors
Meta PlatformsStrategic / 49% Stakeholder
$14.3B Jun 2025 non-voting investment; Wang + senior team transferred to Meta Superintelligence Labs.
US Department of Defense (CDAO)Customer
Thunderforge prime contract Mar 2025 ($250M); also delivers to Army, Air Force, USMC, INDOPACOM via Donovan.
OpenAICustomer
Long-time RLHF and red-teaming partner for GPT-3 / 4 / 5 generations.
MicrosoftCustomer
Labeling and evaluation services for the Phi family and Azure AI offerings.
GM Cruise / Toyota / Waymo / AuroraCustomer
Long-tenured autonomy customers; Scale was the de facto AV labeling vendor through the 2020s.
NVIDIAStrategic / Investor
Series F investor; co-developer on synthetic data pipelines for Cosmos and AV stacks.
AMDStrategic / Investor
Series F investor; LLM labeling and eval for the MI300/MI400 training runs.
Updated at 2025-Q3
Key Milestones
2016
Company Founded
Alexandr Wang (MIT dropout) and Lucy Guo launch Scale at Y Combinator
2019
Scale Document AI
Expansion beyond computer-vision labeling into NLP and document processing
Aug 2019
Unicorn Status
$1B valuation at Series C; Scale becomes the canonical labeling vendor for autonomy and DoD
2022
Scale Donovan Launch
Generative AI platform purpose-built for defense and national-security customers
May 2024
Series F at $13.8B
$1B raise with strategic check-ins from Meta, NVIDIA, AMD, Cisco, Intel; ARR ~$750M
Mar 2025
DoD Thunderforge Award
$250M CDAO contract for agentic AI joint-warfighter prototypes (Scale prime contractor)
Jun 2025
Meta Acquihire / Strategic
Meta pays $14.3B for 49% non-voting stake; Alexandr Wang departs to lead Meta Superintelligence Labs
Jun 2025
Jason Droege Becomes CEO
Former Uber Eats founder takes over as interim CEO post Wang departure
Aug 2025
Scale Layoffs
~14% of headcount cut as Meta consolidates labeling onto its own platform; consumer-data labeling product wound down
Updated at 2025-Q3