Meta Platforms(US:META) Sou Hu Cai Jing·2025-06-17 14:36Group 1 - Meta announced an investment of $14.3 billion to acquire a 49% stake in data infrastructure unicorn Scale AI, marking its second-largest acquisition in history, following the $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014 [2] - The valuation of Scale AI has doubled to $29 billion from a previous $13.8 billion, reflecting significant growth in the company's market position [2] - Scale AI, founded in 2016, specializes in manual data labeling using affordable labor from English-speaking countries, providing high-quality training and validation data for AI models [2][3] Group 2 - High-quality manually labeled data is essential for training powerful AI models, creating a competitive moat for major AI companies [3] - Meta's substantial investment has raised concerns among competitors like Google, Microsoft, and xAI, prompting them to consider shifting their business away from Scale AI [3] - Scale AI's founders, Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo, recognized the critical role of data in AI systems, positioning their company as a key player in the AI data supply chain [5] Group 3 - Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo, both of Chinese descent, have seen their fortunes rise significantly with Scale AI's increased valuation, with Wang becoming the youngest self-made billionaire at $2 billion and Guo at $1.25 billion [7] - Following internal management disagreements, Guo left Scale AI but retained a stake, while Wang transitioned to a new role at Meta's "superintelligence team" to help build next-generation AI systems [7]