- Despite Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI that is shaking up the AI landscape, OpenAI plans to keep working with the startup, according to CFO Sarah Friar. Friar emphasized the importance of maintaining a diverse vendor ecosystem to support AI development. Meanwhile, Scale’s other key customers like Google, Microsoft, and xAI are reportedly looking to distance themselves from the startup.
OpenAI’s CFO, Sarah Friar, says the company plans to continue working with Scale AI despite the startup’s recent multi-billion-dollar partnership with rival Meta.
“We don’t just buy from Scale,” Friar said at the Viva Technology conference in Paris. “We work with many vendors on the data front.”
“As models have gotten smarter, you’re going into a place where you need real expertise…we have academics and experts telling us that they are finding novel things in their space,” she said. “We don’t want to ice the ecosystem, because acquisitions are going to happen and I think if we ice each other out, I think we’re actually going to slow the pace of innovation.”
Founded in 2016, Scale AI supplies large volumes of labeled and curated training data and works with several major AI companies including Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta. On Thursday, Meta announced it was investing $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in the startup—a major move for Meta’s AI capabilities but one that reportedly made some of the Big Tech’s competitors wary of using Scale’s services.
Scale intends to keep operating as an independent business but with deeper commercial ties to Meta. The company’s CEO Alexandr Wang will also join Meta’s team working on “superintelligence” and be replaced by Jason Droege as interim CEO. Wang will remain on Scale’s board and said in a note to employees he would poach a few “Scalien” employees to take with him to Meta, but did not identify them directly.
Scale’s largest customer, Google, reportedly plans to cut ties with the AI data-labeling startup in the wake of the Meta deal. According to a report from Reuters, the tech giant has already held conversations with some of Scale’s rivals to shift much of the workload, representing a significant loss of business for the startup now valued at $29 billion. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment made by Fortune.
Microsoft and Elon Musk’s xAI also reportedly looking to pull back from Scale after the high-profile deal, and despite Friar’s comments, OpenAI reportedly made a similar decision to pull back on some of its business with the startup several months ago.
Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment made by Fortune outside of normal working hours.
Meta’s $14.3 billion AI bet on Scale
Meta’s deal with Scale AI bolsters Meta’s AI credentials after Zuckerberg reaffirmed the company’s commitment to building technology that outstrips human intelligence—and Meta’s rivals—earlier this year.
Meta has trailed rivals in consumer-facing AI and, unlike competitors like Google and OpenAI, has chosen to release its Llama models as open source. The tech giant’s recent Llama 4 AI models received a lukewarm response from developers, and the company hasn’t yet released its most advanced model, Llama 4 Behemoth. The pause on Behemoth was due to concerns from leadership that the model didn’t sufficiently advance on previous models, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Zuckerberg’s primary gain from the investment appears to be Wang. The 28-year-old will join a reported 50-person superintelligence AI team at Meta that is aiming to beat rivals like Google and OpenAI to artificial general intelligence (AGI). According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg is personally recruiting for the team after the CEO was disappointed by the reaction to Llama 4.
