Artificial intelligence data labelling firm Scale AI is laying off around 200 employees, or about 14% of its workforce, with CEO Jason Droege citing the fast rise in its Generative AI capacity in the past year as the reason for the decision, per tech outlet The Verge.
The move comes after Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI for a 49% company stake. In addition to this, Scale AI’s former CEO Alexandr Wang left the company in order to join and lead Meta’s new Superintelligence lab to work on advanced AI technologies.
Droege said that the company’s strategy had led to “inefficiencies and redundancies,” per The Verge, but assured employees that funding and resources were not in short supply.
“We already work with numerous global businesses, the U.S. Government, and governments abroad, but we are going to double down on building applications because that is where we see the future, and that is where we can best service an ever-growing roster of customers,” he earlier said in a company blog post on June 18, after stepping in as interim CEO at Scale AI.
He also stressed at the time that Scale AI would continue to be model-agnostic.
