Scale AI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, California. It provides data labeling and model evaluation services to develop applications for artificial intelligence.
 | |
| Company type | Privately held company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information technology |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Founders | Alexandr Wang Lucy Guo |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Key people | Alexandr Wang (CEO) |
| Number of employees | 900 (2025) |
| Subsidiaries | Remotasks, Outlier.ai |
| Website | scale |
The company’s research arm, the Safety, Evaluation and Alignment Lab (SEAL), focuses on evaluating and aligning large language models (LLMs), including through initiatives such as Humanity’s Last Exam, a benchmark designed to assess advanced AI systems on alignment, reasoning, and safety.[2] Scale AI outsources data labeling through its subsidiaries, Remotasks, which focuses on computer vision and autonomous vehicles, and Outlier, which focuses on data annotation for LLMs.
Scale AI’s customers in the commercial sector include Etsy, General Motors, OpenAI, PayPal, Pinterest, Samsung, Toyota, and Uber.
The company also directly works with world governments, including the United States on multiple military-related projects, and with Qatar to improve the efficiency of its social programs.
In June 2025, Meta agreed to take a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion.
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There was an increased demand for data labelling from clients in different industries.
In February 2022, Scale AI developed its Automated Damage Identification Service in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Satellite imagery was analyzed, measuring the damage to buildings, which were then geotagged and reported to humanitarian groups.
In January 2023, Scale laid off 20% of its workforce.
In May 2023, Scale AI signed a deal with the US Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps, becoming the first AI company to deploy its LLM (known as Donovan) on a classified network.
In August 2023, Scale AI’s evaluation platform was used at DEF CON, a hacking convention, at its first generative AI red team event, testing models provided by various companies.
In December 2023, Scale AI was among a list of companies that contributed to Meta Platforms’s Purple Llama initiative, a security framework for the purpose of development of open generative AI models.
In February 2024, Scale AI was selected by the Department of Defense to test and evaluate its LLMs for military purposes under a one-year contract.
In March 2024, Scale reached a valuation of almost $13 billion after Accel led another round of funding.
In May 2024, Scale raised an additional $1 billion with new investors including Amazon and Meta Platforms. Its valuation reached $14 billion.
In December 2024, Scale was sued by a former employee with allegations that it was committing wage theft and misclassifying workers.
The following month, a second employee filed suit against the company citing similar claims. In January 2025, several contractors sued Scale alleging psychological harm from being exposed to toxic material, such as content related to violence and child abuse.
In January 2025, it was reported in The Conversation that Scale AI and Meta had previously teamed up to create and sell Defense Llama, a LLM product with military-style defense purposes.
The company also took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post, appealing to American President Donald Trump to “win the AI war”.
Later in the month, Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety partnered to release Humanity’s Last Exam, a benchmark test for AI systems. The company has also assisted in the development of the benchmarks EnigmaEval, MultiChallenge, and MASK.
In February 2025, Scale AI agreed to a five-year partnership with the Qatari government to improve government services via AI-based tools and training, including predictive analytics, automation, and advanced data analytics.
The deal was signed at the Web Qatar 2025 Summit by Mohammed bin Ali bin Mohammed Al Mannai, the Qatari Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Also in February, the company became a third-party evaluator of AI models for the U.S. AI Safety Institute.
In March 2025, Scale AI reached a deal with the United States Department of Defense to develop the Thunderforge project. The project aims to use AI to “plan and help execute movements of ships, planes, and other assets”, with the goal of speeding up military decisions in both peace and wartime.
The contract was awarded to Scale AI and other companies (such as Anduril Industries and Microsoft) by the Defense Innovation Unit, and is intended to first be used with the USINDOPACOM and EUCOM.
In April 2025, Scale AI released Scale Evaluation, a platform used to test LLMs against benchmarks to pinpoint weaknesses and flag where additional training data would improve the model.
On June 10, 2025, it was reported that Meta has agreed to take a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.8 billion.
Wang will reportedly take a top position inside Meta as a part of the deal. As a result, Google which was Scale AI’s largest customer stated plans to cut ties with the company.
The pay for some annotation tasks dropped to less than one cent due to “vicious competition” after Remotask expanded to India as well as Venezuela.
Late payments are reportedly “commonplace”, and some workers received only a few percent of their promised compensation.
In 2022, a University of Oxford study said Remotasks met the “minimum standards of fair work” in only two out of ten criteria.
Remotasks has been criticized for obscuring its affiliation with Scale AI, opaque communications, and abrupt changes in worker access in some regions.
In early 2024, the platform terminated operations in several countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan, citing administrative and operational considerations.
Outlier
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