Scale AI founder Wang announces exit for Meta part of $14 billion deal

Alexandr Wang, CEO of ScaleAI speaks on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 23, 2025.

Gerry Miller | CNBC

Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang told employees in a memo on Thursday that he’s leaving for Meta, confirming reports from earlier in the week about his departure and a large investment from the social networking company.

Meta is pumping $14.3 billion into Scale AI as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, but will not have any voting power, a Scale AI spokesperson said.

“As you’ve probably gathered from recent news, opportunities of this magnitude often come at a cost,” Wang wrote in the memo that he shared on X. “In this instance, that cost is my departure. It has been the absolute greatest pleasure of my life to serve as your CEO.”

Scale AI is promoting Jason Droege, the chief strategy officer, to the CEO role. Droege was previously a venture partner at Benchmark and an Uber vice president.

A small number of Scale AI employees will also join Meta as part of the agreement, Wang wrote.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company has finalized its “strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI.”

“As part of this, we will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,” the spokesperson said. “We will share more about this effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks.”

Meta’s big bet on Wang fits into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to bolster his company’s AI efforts amid fierce competition from OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Zuckerberg has made AI his company’s top priority for 2025, but has grown increasingly frustrated with his team, particularly as Meta’s latest version of its flagship Llama AI models received a tepid response from developers, CNBC reported earlier this week.

Although Zuckerberg has traditionally placed long-standing employees into high-ranking positions, he decided that the outsider Wang would be better suited to oversee AI initiatives deemed crucial for the company.

Scale AI counts a number of Meta rivals as customers, including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. Meta is one of Scale AI’s biggest clients.

The Scale AI spokesperson said that Meta’s investment and hiring of Wang will not impact the startup’s customers, and that Meta will not be privy to any of its business information or data.