Scale AI, founded in 2016 by Alexandr Wang, built its business on data labeling and annotation infrastructure for machine learning teams, growing into a core supplier for autonomous vehicle programs and foundation model developers who need large, accurately labeled training datasets.
Meta invested roughly $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in 2025, a deal that brought Wang into Meta's AI leadership while Scale AI continued operating its data-infrastructure business independently, serving both existing enterprise customers and internal Meta AI projects.
Pricing is enterprise and volume-based, negotiated per project, with a self-serve tier for smaller labeling jobs starting around $0.05 per labeling unit after a free monthly allowance. For a team that needs high-volume, quality-controlled training data rather than building an in-house labeling pipeline, Scale AI's infrastructure addresses that directly.
