Scale AI raised $1 billion in a funding round that valued it at $13.8 billion.
The company announced the Series F round in a Tuesday (May 21) blog post, saying it would use the financing to build what founder Alexandr Wang called the “data foundry” that brings about an age of artificial intelligence-ready “data abundance.”
“Abundance is not the default; it’s a choice,” Wang wrote in the post. “It requires bringing together the best minds in engineering, operations and AI. Our calling is to build the data foundry for AI, and with today’s funding, we’re moving into the next phase of that journey — accelerating the abundance of frontier data that will pave our road to AGI.”
Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is AI that matches or exceeds the capabilities of humans.
Although AI has made great strides in specific areas — image recognition, language processing and strategic decision-making – it’s not yet clear whether these achievements can be seamlessly integrated into a comprehensive, human-like intelligence.
“Critics argue that many of the claims surrounding AGI are overblown and that the field has yet to produce concrete evidence of machines that can truly think and reason like humans,” PYMNTS wrote last month. “Moreover, the development of AGI raises significant ethical and societal concerns. As machines become capable of performing tasks previously reserved for humans, the potential impact on employment could be substantial.”
In addition, there are questions about the safety and control of AGI systems, especially if they surpass human intelligence and become difficult to manage.
“To address these concerns, researchers and policymakers have emphasized the importance of responsible AI development,” PYMNTS wrote. “This includes ensuring transparency, accountability and fairness in AI systems, as well as establishing clear guidelines for the ethical development and deployment of AGI technologies.”
Founded in 2016, Scale AI said in the post that it has taken part in several high-profile public and private sector AI operations.
For example, Scale’s Public Sector Data Engine has powered several AI programs for the U.S. Department of Defense, per the post. Scale also teamed with OpenAI for the first experiments of “reinforcement learning with human feedback” on GPT-2, “and scaled these techniques to InstructGPT and beyond.”
The company now supplies data to fuel “nearly every leading AI model,” he added, working with companies that include OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft.
A Tuesday Bloomberg report called Scale’s funding round one of the largest this year and noted that the company’s valuation has nearly doubled since 2021.
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