Meta is reportedly weighing a multibillion-dollar investment in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Scale AI.
The tech giant is in talks with Scale AI about an investment that could exceed $10 billion, Bloomberg News reported Sunday (June 8), citing sources familiar with the matter.
Scale AI, which counts Microsoft and OpenAI among its clients, offers data labeling services to help businesses train machine learning models. As Bloomberg noted, the startup has been a crucial beneficiary of the generative AI boom, valued at $13.8 billion following a funding round in the spring of 2024. Meta was among the investors in that round, which raised $1 billion.
PYMNTS has contacted both Meta and Scale AI for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.
According to Bloomberg, the investment would mark Meta’s largest-ever outside expenditure on AI, a rare move for a company that has largely depended on internal research.
At the same time, rival tech giants have been spending heavily on AI, from Microsoft’s $13-plus billion investment in OpenAI to Google’s and Amazon’s push to back competing startup Anthropic.
The report also noted that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s chief priority, announcing plans in January to spend up to $65 billion on related projects this year. Meta also aims to make its Llama AI model the global industry standard, the report added, as its chatbot is used by 1 billion people per month on its social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The news follows reports from last month that Meta was reorganizing its generative artificial intelligence team to accelerate rollouts of products and features. The move, which involves dividing the team into two groups, is designed to streamline operations and clarify roles, thus enhancing the company’s competitive edge in the rapidly changing AI industry, Meta said in an internal memo cited in media reports.
In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote recently about the way small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are embracing artificial intelligence to compete against large enterprises.
“By automating processes, augmenting talent, and accelerating decision-making, AI enables smaller firms to bypass legacy systems and leap directly into an AI-first business model — one that can rival what large incumbents offer,” that report said.
That report followed the release of new data from Verizon Business’ 2025 State of Small Business Survey, showing that 38% of SMBs are integrating AI into operations. In addition, 28% of SMBs said they were deploying AI for marketing and social media, while 24% use it for written communications.
