After Meta shocked the tech world in June by announcing plans to invest $14.3 billion in Scale AI, primarily as a way to hire the startup's founder, Alexandr Wang, and a handful of his employees, the future of Scale was immediately thrown in doubt. OpenAI soon disclosed that it had been winding down its work with Scale, which prepares the data that artificial intelligence labs and big tech companies use to train their models. Companies including Google and Elon Musk 's xAI also paused work with