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Scale AI

Topic: Company

 From HandWiki - Reading time: 3 min

Scale AI, Inc.
TypePrivate
IndustryArtificial intelligence
Enterprise software
FoundedJune 2016; 9 years ago (2016-06)
FoundersAlexandr Wang
Lucy Guo
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, US
Key people
Alexandr Wang (CEO)
Michael Kratsios (Head of Strategy)
Number of employees
600 (2023)
Websitescale.com
Footnotes / references
[1][2][3]

Scale AI (Scale) is an American artificial intelligence (AI) company founded based in San Francisco. The company focuses on providing businesses with labeled data needed to train their AI systems.

History

Scale was founded in the summer of 2016 by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo.[3][4] The two met when they worked at Quora.[3][4] After receiving funding from Y Combinator, Wang decided to drop out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology after his first undergraduate year to found Scale .[3][4]

In 2018, Guo left Scale although she still owns a 6% stake in the company.[5]

In August, Scale reached Unicorn status after its valuation exceeded $1 billion.[6][7]

In December 2020, Scale was valued at $3.5 billion and raised $155 million with Tiger Global Management leading the fundraising.[8][9] Scale also announced at this time that it would be acquiring Helia AI, a start-up that builds software to help companies run AI models on video streams in real time.[8][9]

In May 2021, Scale hired Michael Kratsios as Head of Strategy.[10][11] Kratsios was previously the Chief Technology Officer of the United States under the Trump Administration.[10][11]

In January 2022, Scale secured a $250 million Blanket Purchase Agreement with the United States Department of Defense.[3][2][12]

In April 2022, Scale's valuation reached $7.3 billion and raised $325 million in funding.[9][11][13][14][15] Investors included Dragoneer, Tiger Global, Wellington Management, Coatue, Index Ventures, Founders Fund and Y Combinator. [9][13][14]

In January 2023, Scale cut 20% of its workforce due to economic conditions.[14]

In February 2023, Scale announced it would invest $2 million into Puerto Rico’s Port of Ponce to turn part of it into a “Smart Port Lab”.[16] The aim will be to create a port that is operated by AI.[16]

Business overview

The main business of Scale is to provide businesses with labeled data in order to train their AI systems. The training process requires tens of thousands data examples to be annotated with labels so the data quality meets the required standards. An example of an industry that requires the use of such data is the autonomous car industry. Waymo, Cruise and Uber which were some of the earlier customers of Scale.[3][4][6][7][9][10][11][14][15]

Scale also provides data management software packages mainly related to data labeling to its customers. An example of a software package is Nucleus which enables firms to quickly identify and fix mislabeled data.[2][3][6][9][11][15]

In January 2022, Scale announced that it would establish a synthetic data division that would use machine learning algorithms to generate artificial data. An example of this would be to generate data-driven maps for customers in the autonomous car industry.[2][3][14][17]

Scale serves over 300 companies and organizations.[4] Notable customers of Scale AI include Airbnb, DoorDash, General Motors, Lyft, Nvidia, OpenAI, PayPal, Pinterest and the United States Armed Forces.[2][3][4][6][7][8][10][9][13]

References

  1. ↑ "About Us | Scale AI". https://scale.com/about. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Scale AI | Company Overview & News" (in en). https://www.forbes.com/companies/scale-ai/?sh=b7991bc2549f. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 "How This 6-Year-Old AI Startup Wins Department of Defense’s Trust?". 7 November 2022. https://envzone.com/scale-ai-from-shortly-failed-experiments-to-the-chief-of-data-quality/. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 "Who is Alexandr Wang, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire?" (in en). 2022-05-31. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/3179833/next-elon-musk-meet-alexandr-wang-ceo-scale-ai-and. 
  5. ↑ "Who is Lucy Guo, second richest self-made woman under 40 after Kylie Jenner?" (in en). 2022-06-20. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3182367/who-lucy-guo-richest-self-made-woman-under-40-after-kylie. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "Silicon Valley’s Latest Unicorn Is Run by a 22-Year-Old" (in en). Bloomberg.com. 2019-08-05. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-05/scale-ai-is-silicon-valley-s-latest-unicorn. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Why Tech Firm Scale AI Is the Next $1 Billion Unicorn Star" (in en). https://www.investopedia.com/why-tech-firm-scale-ai-is-the-next-usd1-billion-unicorn-star-4767764. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Novet, Jordan. "Scale, which helps companies improve their A.I. capabilities, is now worth more than $3.5 billion and breaking even" (in en). https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/01/scale-ai-breaking-even-after-it-scaled-back-hiring.html. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 "Data-labeling company Scale AI is worth $7.3 billion after new funding round" (in en). https://fortune.com/2021/04/13/scale-ai-valuation-new-funding-fundraising-data-labeling-company-startups-vc/. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Council, Jared. "Scale AI Hires Former U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios as Head of Strategy" (in en-US). https://www.wsj.com/articles/scale-ai-hires-former-u-s-cto-michael-kratsios-as-head-of-strategy-11622160086. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Loten, Angus. "Scale AI’s Rapid Growth Reflects Widening Demand for Smart Software" (in en-US). https://www.wsj.com/articles/scale-ais-rapid-growth-reflects-widening-demand-for-smart-software-11626082201. 
  12. ↑ Wodecki, Ben (February 4, 2022). "Scale AI nabs $250M deal to AI-ready the US Defense Department". https://aibusiness.com/verticals/scale-ai-nabs-250m-deal-to-ai-ready-the-us-defense-department. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 "Artificial intelligence firm Scale raises $325 million at $7 billion valuation" (in en). Reuters. 2021-04-13. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-scale-ai-funding-idUSKBN2C02QN. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Korosec, Kirsten (2023-01-10). "Scale AI cuts 20% of its workforce" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/10/scale-ai-cuts-20-of-its-workforce/. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 "Scale AI launches rapid data-labeling service" (in en-US). 2021-10-07. https://venturebeat.com/business/scale-rapid-promises-quality-data-labeling-for-ai-in-as-little-as-an-hour/. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "A Tiny Puerto Rican Port Is Turning Into a Test Lab for Trade Fluidity" (in en). Bloomberg.com. 2023-02-16. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-16/tiger-global-backed-company-turns-puerto-rico-port-into-ai-playground. 
  17. ↑ Korosec, Kirsten (2022-02-02). "Scale AI gets into the synthetic data game" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/02/scale-ai-gets-into-the-synthetic-data-game/. 




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