{"id":182332,"date":"2025-06-13T23:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T23:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182332\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T23:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T23:39:08","slug":"new-details-emerge-on-metas-14-3b-deal-for-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182332\/","title":{"rendered":"New details emerge on Meta\u2019s $14.3B deal for Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meta\u2019s deal to <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/06\/13\/scale-ai-confirms-significant-investment-from-meta-says-ceo-alexandr-wang-is-leaving\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">partially<\/a> acquire the AI startup Scale, giving it 49% ownership, is certainly unusual.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What Scale officially <a href=\"https:\/\/scale.com\/blog\/scale-ai-announces-next-phase-of-company-evolution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">announced<\/a> is that the deal values the company at over $29 billion and that it will \u201cdistribute\u201d proceeds to shareholders and vested equity holders (aka employees) granting them with \u201csubstantial liquidity\u201d while allowing them to continue as shareholders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meta is also hiring Scale\u2019s famed founder CEO Alexandr Wang, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/how-alexandr-wang-built-scale-ai-into-1-billion-company-2020-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">famously dropped out of MIT at age 19<\/a> to build the company, which offers AI training data verified by humans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This might sound like Meta would buy shares from existing shareholders, but that\u2019s not the case, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-06-13\/scale-ai-backer-accel-set-for-2-5-billion-windfall-on-meta-deal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">sources told Bloomberg.<\/a> Investors are getting dividends, TechCrunch has confirmed. For instance Accel, which backed the company early, should get a payout of $2.5 billion, Bloomberg reports. (Accel declined comment.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Scale has dozens of backers, including Amazon and Meta, and was <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/05\/21\/data-labeling-startup-scale-ai-raises-1b-as-valuation-doubles-to-13-8b\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">last valued at $14 billion after raising a $1 billion<\/a> Series F a year ago.\u00a0So a dividend payout of this magnitude is almost like buying the company. We\u2019ll have to wait and see if regulators agree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s deal to partially acquire the AI startup Scale, giving it 49% ownership, is certainly unusual. What Scale&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[35896,51,2902,598,44109,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-182332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-accel","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-in-brief","11":"tag-meta","12":"tag-scale","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114678698002606922","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}