Meta’s Risky Scale AI Bet Shows Self-Assurance—or Hubris

Mark Zuckerberg seems confident! As we reported earlier today, Meta Platforms is on the cusp of taking a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.8 billion and bringing the AI startup’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, on board to lead a new AI lab. There are echoes in the Meta–Scale AI talks of earlier deals between big tech companies and AI startups, including Google’s agreement with Character.AI and Microsoft’s deal with Inflection. 

Both of those deals—which brought the AI startups’ founders to the big tech companies in exchange for cash that went to the startups’ investors—were able to at least initially sidestep the regulatory scrutiny that conventional acquisitions are subject to.