Scale AI

These companies are built to exhibit resilience amid volatility—and deliver better-than-average growth in the long term.

The Future 50

These 50 companies exemplify the innovation, progress, and potential of AI.

AI Innovators 2025-Scale

Fortune 50 AI Innovators

The essential guide to a sector that’s now attracting one out of every four startup investment dollars.

AI-Innovators-2023-Scale

AI automates, but to get to the sophistication of chatbots like ChatGPT requires humans—and a lot of them. While the LLMs behind OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude learn the statistical connections in language on their own, to guide and refine the responses these models will provide through a chatbot interface, companies turn to a process known as reinforcement learning from human feedback (or RLHF) where human evaluators judge whether the model's answers are useful, helpful, and "safe" (usually meaning not offensive or likely to be used for harm). Then the model is rewarded for producing answers more like those that the human evaluators labelled as good. But all that requires humans. Which is where Scale comes in. Its whole business is around providing the data labels that AI companies need. Often, those labelers work for low wages in the developing world. In Kenya, for example, Scale AI, a Silicon Valley darling, paid workers between $1 and $3 to train AI models, according to The Verge. (A spokesperson said the company adheres to minimum wage law in all counties in which it operates.) Founded by Alexandr Wang in 2016, who was then only 19 years old, Scale is best known as the data maven behind many of the world’s most sophisticated AI models, including those used by a number of self-driving car companies and to support decision-making in defense. The tasks are often simple and monotonous: identify characteristics of retail products or identify objects in an image. While Scale got its start labeling objects in image data for self-driving algorithms, it has now expanded its training to a wide assortment of AI models for customers like Etsy, Instacart, Meta, and, of course, OpenAI. And it’s ridden the AI boom to raise a total of approximately $600 million at a most recent valuation of $7.3 billion. CTO Vijay Karunamurthy said, however, that Scale, which also builds its own AI algorithms, is looking to go beyond finding laypeople to more curated experts, like an authority in ancient Aramaic, to help train models: “Expert feedback is incredibly valuable to help the model structure its thinking.”

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Scale AI Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Scale AI | Fortune

Scale AI Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

At just 21 years old, Lucy Guo co-founded Scale AI. Two years later, she walked away and went on to become the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.


Now, she’s building Passes, a creator monetization platform shaping the future of digital media. Lucy sits down with Fortune Daily to discuss: 
• Building an AI giant before the boom 
• Bouncing back from a contentious exit 
• Early bets on Anthropic and the future of artificial intelligence 
• How a new generation of multi-hyphenate tech founders is wielding global influence


Also on today's show: 
• Fame to Fortune: Kristin Stoller sits down with two-time World Cup champion and former USWNT goalie Ashlyn Harris to break down the business of sports. 
• High Stakes Strategy: Former FBI lead hostage negotiator and CEO of The Black Swan Group, Chris Voss, shares negotiation tactics for high-net-worth, high-security environments.
Subscribe to Fortune: ⁠https://fortune.com/subscribe/⁠ 
Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

00:00 Lucy Guo
14:25 Ashlyn Harris
18:40 Chris Voss


How Lucy Guo Became a Self-Made AI Billionaire | Fortune Daily

Features

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More than three-quarters of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, according to McKinsey data, yet adoption often outpaces execution. The harder task is to move beyond tokenmaxxing—treating ever-higher AI token consumption as a proxy for productivity—and turn promising tools into durable productivity gains and measurable business value. This session examines what that takes: orchestrating multiple AI systems at scale, developing models that work in local languages and contexts, and building sovereign AI capabilities that give organisations greater control over their data, models, and deployment choices. Technology leaders explore how businesses can embed privacy, security, and trust from the outset—while building AI that employees and customers can actually use, and that delivers value beyond the demo.

Alvin Kwock, Co-founder & CEO , AIFT 
Becca Carroll, Chief Strategy Officer, IDEO 
Pak-Sun Ting, Co-founder and CEO, Votee AI 
Madhav Timalsina, Vice President & Group Director, Infosys 
Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia, Fortune 

Beyond Tokenmaxxing: Accelerating AI Adoption

Conferences

Fortune unveils ranking of top 500 companies in Europe at the London Stock Exchange
 
Fortune joined the London Stock Exchange opening ceremony on September 16 to celebrate the launch of the Fortune 500 Europe ranking for 2026.

Now in its fourth year, the list highlights the continent’s 500 biggest companies by revenue, underscoring the scale and influence of Europe’s corporate giants. Combined, the businesses on the 2026 list generated $15.5 trillion of revenue, up 4% from last year. The top 10 alone account for more than $2 trillion in revenue, with energy, finance, and automotive companies dominating the upper ranks.

Discover the Fortune 500 Europe 2026 - Insights by Grethe Schepers, Lists Director, Europe.

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22 data points on 582 companies. That's almost 13,000 facts checked twice every time. Greta, tell me, why is the Fortune 500 list so important? It's an iconic list and it's a benchmark for European business. It's 35 million employees, 15.5 trillion in revenue, over 1 trillion in profit. For the first time, Germany is no longer the biggest contributor by the number of companies on the list. That's actually now the UK. If you look at the biggest company on the list, it's Volkswagen is almost $100 billion in revenue bigger than number 2, that is Shell. Four energy companies in the top 10, 4 carmakers and 1 financial. These are big international global companies that are very successful and that are very often very near the top of our list.

AI, precision medicine, diagnostics, and digital health are transforming our understanding of human health. Yet despite unprecedented advances in prevention, treatment, and care, chronic disease is on the rise, healthcare costs continue to climb, and ageing populations are reshaping societies across Asia and beyond. As longer lives become the norm, the challenge is no longer simply to extend lifespan, but to improve healthspan—and doing so at scale. Can innovation help people live healthier, more productive lives? And what role will healthcare providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and technology firms play in shaping the future of health and the longevity economy?


Dr. Kelvin Loh, Group Chief Healthcare Officer, AIA 
Dr. Feng Ren, Co-CEO, CSO, Head of Drug R&D, Insilico Medicine 
Dr. Keith Choy, President, APAC, Haleon 
Orianna Rosa Royle, Success Associate Editor, Fortune 

Scale AI

Scale AI in Fortune Rankings

Scale AI in Fortune Rankings

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