Why Scale AI Laid Off Its GenAI Team After Meta’s $14B Investment

If this was the team entrusted with Scale’s most ambitious AI initiatives, why were they the first to be cut just weeks after a record-setting investment?
One month after Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and recruited its high-profile CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead a new superintelligence division, the data infrastructure startup has laid off 14% of its full-time workforce and ended contracts with 500 external workers. The restructuring, announced in an internal memo obtained by multiple outlets, affects approximately 200 full-time employees and comes amid growing concerns over client retention, leadership churn, and strategic confusion within Scale’s generative AI division, a unit that until recently powered projects for clients including xAI, Google, and OpenAI. "These changes will make us more nimble enabling us to react more quickly to shifts in the market and customer needs," interim CEO Jason Droege wrote in a company-wide
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Anshika Mathews
Anshika is the Senior Content Strategist for AIM Research. She holds a keen interest in technology and related policy-making and its impact on society. She can be reached at anshika.mathews@aimresearch.co
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