The Data-Foundry Labor Base: Annotators and Internal Headcount
| Workforce Segment | Figure | As of | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remotasks/Outlier contributor community | 240,000+ | 2024-2025 | Global gig crowd; registered community count, not active-at-once headcount |
| Remotasks | Majority of crowd | 2024-2025 | Computer-vision and autonomous-vehicle labeling lineage |
| Outlier (ex-Remotasks RLHF) | Mass expert recruiting | 2024-2025 | LLM annotation and expert feedback; thousands of open roles cited mid-2025 |
| Internal (W-2) headcount, pre-layoff | ~1,400 | Mid-2025 | Full-time employees before the July 2025 restructuring |
| July 2025 layoff | ~14% (~200 employees) | Jul 2025 | Plus ~500 contractors cut; concentrated in over-scaled core data-labeling unit |
| Post-layoff hiring pledge | Net adds planned | H2 2025 | Droege to grow enterprise, public-sector, and international applications headcount |
Updated at 2025-07
Customer Flight After the Meta Deal (2025)
| Customer / Relationship | Disclosed Spend | Status After Meta Deal | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google (largest customer) | ~$150M (2024); ~$200M planned (2025) | Splitting / winding down | Plan to cut ties reported within days of the deal; conflict-of-interest with a Meta-aligned vendor |
| OpenAI | Undisclosed | Phasing out | Said Scale was a small fraction of its data needs; pullback predates but accelerated post-deal |
| Microsoft | Undisclosed | Backing away | Reported to be reducing reliance on Scale post-deal |
| xAI (Elon Musk) | Undisclosed | Looking to exit | Reported among labs seeking to leave Scale |
| Meta Platforms | $14.3B strategic stake | Anchor partner / 49% owner | Becomes both largest shareholder and a primary data relationship; founder and senior team transferred |
| Data business (overall) | Not disclosed | Grew every month post-deal (per CFO) | CFO disclosure Nov 2025, rebutting 'zombie company' framing; absolute figures not given |
| Applications business (enterprise + public sector) | Not disclosed | Roughly doubled H2 2025 vs H1 2025 | Strategic pivot away from competing-lab labeling toward enterprise and government applications |
Updated at 2025-11
Defense and Public-Sector Contract Portfolio
| Program / Customer | Announced | Disclosed Value | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal agencies suite access | Jan 2022 | $250M (ceiling) | Broad access to Scale's tools across US federal agencies; often miscited as the Thunderforge value |
| Donovan on Army classified network | May 2023 | Undisclosed | US Army XVIII Airborne Corps; first AI company to deploy an LLM on a classified network |
| DoD LLM test and evaluation | Feb 2024 | Undisclosed | One-year contract to test and evaluate LLMs for military use |
| Qatar national AI partnership | Feb 2025 | Undisclosed (5-year) | AI agents and tooling for education, healthcare, transportation, and government services |
| Thunderforge (DIU prime) | Mar 2025 | Undisclosed ('multimillion') | Prime contract for agentic AI joint-warfighter planning; plan and execute movement of ships, planes, assets |
| CDAO agreement | Sep 2025 | $100M | Chief Digital and AI Office vehicle; AI tools for decision-making and data workflows |
| CDAO expansion | May 2026 | $500M | Roughly fivefold expansion of the Sept 2025 deal; principal Pentagon vehicle for large-scale AI integration |
Updated at 2026-05
Scale AI Funding Rounds and Valuation Trajectory
| Round (date, lead) | Amount | Valuation | Notable Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed (2016) | $4.5M | n/a | Accel, Index Ventures |
| Series A (2017, Index) | $18M | n/a | Index Ventures (lead) |
| Series B (2018, Founders Fund) | $18M | n/a | Founders Fund (lead) |
| Series C (2019-08, Founders Fund) | $100M | $1.0B | Founders Fund (lead); unicorn status |
| Series D (2020-12, Tiger Global) | $155M | $3.5B | Tiger Global (lead), Wellington, Greenoaks |
| Series E (2021-04, Dragoneer) | $325M | $7.3B | Dragoneer (lead), Greenoaks, Tiger Global, Wellington |
| Series F (2024-05, Accel) | $1.0B | $13.8B | Accel (lead), Amazon, Meta, NVIDIA, AMD, Cisco, Intel Capital, ServiceNow, Wellington |
| Meta strategic stake (2025-06) | $14.3B (49% non-voting) | $29B (implied) | Meta Platforms; founder Alexandr Wang to Meta Superintelligence Labs |
Updated at 2025-06
Scale AI Annual Revenue Trajectory
2021-2025
Annual Revenue (USD M)
Updated at 2026-02
Scale AI in AI Software
OpenAI
$PRIVATE
Largest AI lab by revenue. Approximately $13B annualized run-rate revenue (mid-2025) from a mix of ChatGPT consumer subscriptions, ChatGPT Enterprise / Team, the OpenAI API, and Microsoft Azure OpenAI revenue share. ChatGPT reaches roughly 800M weekly active users (late 2025). Builder of the GPT family (GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, GPT-5, o-series reasoning models) and Sora video. Microsoft is the dominant compute and distribution partner; SoftBank led the $40B March 2025 primary round at $300B.
