Zuckerburg Prepares Tech's Largest $10 Billion “Human Data Sweatshop” AI Investment…

Mark Zuckerberg is about to dump more cash on Scale AI than most countries spend defending themselves from, well, Mark Zuckerberg. Word is Meta is negotiating a $10 billion investment… a number so obscene that even SoftBank’s Vision Fund is somewhere nervously chain-smoking on the move. 

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, Big Zuck is possibly about to unleash the single largest private tech check ever written. For reference, Meta’s practically allergic to investing in outside AI companies. Zuck’s usual move is either: A) clone the competition and sue them into oblivion, or B) buy them outright, then act shocked when the FTC starts knocking. But $10 billion is a capital load that has all the Bonnie Blue’s of tech taking notice like never before. 

But, but, but… what’s Scale AI, anyway? For one, it’s definitely not a “pivot to AI” startup with a ChatGPT wrapper. Turns out, Scale is the actual backbone of machine learning’s dirty little secret: making armies of low-paid contractors “label” mind-numbing oceans of data so your chatbot doesn’t confuse a hot dog for a wiener dog. They process, scrub, and tag everything from cat memes to battlefield drone footage. In fact, Scale is now so integral to government contracts that the Pentagon is on speed dial. You want a robot that doesn’t accidentally call in an airstrike on a Taco Bell? Scale is the guy. 

(Source: Bloomberg) 

What’s more is that Scale AI raked in a chunky $870 million in revenue and expects to double that to $2 billion in 2025. Which, if you’re keeping score, makes them the hottest labelers since the FDA put “gluten-free” on everything. Oh, and their last valuation was $14 billion, but a recent tender offer supposedly valued them at $25 billion. Only in Silicon Valley can you go from “maybe a decacorn” to “let’s quadruple that” in less time than it takes to fix Facebook’s privacy settings.

With that said though, Zuck doesn’t do cloud (sorry, AWS/Azure stans), so he can’t just buy his way into AI by offering “compute credits” like Microsoft’s $13B OpenAI romance or Amazon’s Anthropic rebound. Meta’s Llama chatbot empire… the same on Zuck is now handing to the Pentagon… needs data more than I need validation from my wife. And Scale’s business is making that data digestible for neural nets everywhere. 

(Source: Giphy) 

For more perspective, think of this $10B play as Zuckerberg stapling himself to the only company that can shovel enough sanitized, human-labeled data into the AI furnace to keep Llama competitive. On the other hand, given the fact that Scale is already in bed with the military, and Meta just signed up with Anduril for an “AI” helmet”... the defense angle is looking thicc and juicy here. Why? Because they’re also working on something called “Defense Llama,” which sounds like a rejected Fortnite skin but is just Meta’s LLM for the Department of Defense.

Meaning, if this deal closes, Meta doesn’t just get a seat at the AI data buffet, but they get leverage over the very market feeding their competitors. Good luck training your Googlebot when Zuck controls the data oil wells. Of course, somewhere out there, Lina Khan is already writing her angry letter. But by the time the government wakes up, the deal may be done, and Zuck will have already piled drove his $10 billion for a data-scrubbing sweatshop. 

(Source: Giphy) 

For now, nothing is set and stone yet, but talks are definitely on the table. Unless, something absolutely batsh*t crazy happens, I don’t see how this doesn’t happen. But again, don’t hold your breath either. Meaning, keep your eyes on this story and place your bets accordingly. Until next time, friends…

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.