Meta has big ambitions in the AI arena and it wants to add further tools to its armoury to compete with OpenAI and Google in the next few years. Reports say Meta is ready to pay $15 billion (more than what Facebook paid to buy WhatsApp) for a company called Scale AI where it can have 49 percent stake and look to build on its current potential to become an AI giant. 

According to The Information report, Meta is willing to bring Scale AI CEO and lead its pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI). WhatsApp has been a big hit for the company, and its overall user base has allowed Meta to push its AI chatbot to a wider audience. 

So what does Scale AI bring to the table for Mark Zuckerberg and Co., what does this company offer and why is Meta investing heavily in it, here are the details. 

Meta Putting $15 Billion In Scale AI But Why? 

Meta does not like investing big money without seeing actual value for its returns. Microsoft invested billions into OpenAI which has catapulted the company’s own Copilot evolution in the last few years. Meta sees Scale AI becoming its anchor, helping them with high-quality data for AI training, something that will propel its pace of creating new AI models and chatbots for the public and the industry. 

Scale AI is a US-based company led by CEO Alexandr Wang, who is going to lead the internal AI research lab as a part of the reported deal between the companies. 

It’s All About Data 

Meta and other companies aiming for the sky in the AI arena need high-quality data, which is not available in abundance. That’s where companies like Scale AI look to superpower and supplement their need for data, to train the AI systems that not only align with human-like decision making but also focus on refining the existing AI models that will play a big role in the developing a large-scale AI infrastructure. 

The AGI Dream

The plan to have Wang lead the AI team is based on Meta’s ambition to get AGI ready to be deployed into its products like Meta AI chatbot and even the Ray Ban smart glasses. 

AGI is a dream for many of these AI giants and Meta is looking to get a big leg up over its rivals with the help of Scale AI and its team of researchers under its wing. The human-like reasoning creates AGI and for that Meta needs high-quality (which Scale AI can offer) and heavier computational power for which it is ready to invest over $70 billion in the next few years. The race for AGI is going to heat up and expect more companies to try similar deals to attain data and hardware to succeed.