If you are an IT behemoth and struggling with your AI products’ market fit, certainly it is a matter of grave concern. Earlier, Meta’s Metaverse dream had gone awry. The launch and super success of ChatGPT and its creator OpenAI unleashed the AI war, which continues unabated. If you are one of the warring parties, you are convinced of the fact that you are in the game. The recent moves and launches of Meta gives them a feeling that they are out of the race or on the verge of it. Zuckerberg is getting frustrated as his AI dreams are not taking shape.
The last straw on the camel’s back was Llama 4’s lacklustre debut. Meta’s release of it’s Llama 4 AI models in April was not well received by developers. What was actually released? Meta only released two smaller versions of Llama 4 and promised that it would release a bigger and more powerful “Behemoth” model. The model has still not been released. Zuckerberg is having concerns about its capabilities relative to the competing models in particular OpenAI model and China’s DeepSeek, whose models are preferred by the wider developer community.
An AI existential crisis for Meta, time to re-strategize, develop, create and deliver. Time is running out. A headline sums it all; “A frustrated Zuckerberg makes his biggest AI bet as Meta nears $14 billion stake in Scale AI, hires founder Wang.” What does the deal, if it goes through, mean? With this deal of $14 billion investment in Scale AI, Zuckerberg is hiring its co-founder Alexandr Wang to help the social media giant better execute on its AI ambitions. What is Wang known for? As the founder of a prominent startup, Wang is known as an ambitious leader who both understands AI’s technical capabilities and how to build business not focussed only on research.
Meta is also taking the same strategy of Google and Microsoft; they brought in prominent leaders from AI startups Character.AI and Inflection AI. They took large stakes in the company rather than a straight AI. Meta is already facing a trial for antitrust claims. The data labelling and annotation startup as per the deal will have 49% stake taken over by Meta. Wang will head the AI lab at Meta. Scale AI was founded in 2016 and gained recognition by helping OpenAI, Google and Microsoft prepare data they use to train cutting edge AI models. Meta has been one of its biggest customers.
IF META IS NOT ABLE TO PULL OFF THIS AI COUP, IT WILL JUST REMAIN AN ALSO RAN IN THE AI RACE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.