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Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

nytimes.com

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Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#61

Post by mooreds »

bix6 wrote: post #7

This is a weird deal? Meta buys a non-controlling stake and says no customers will be affected but the CEO and others are leaving Scale for Meta. Meta also says they won’t have access to competitor data but at 49% ownership they get major investor rights? Sounds like an acqui-kill to me?

The host on this podcast[0] had a good point about the "investment". It was really a merger, but framed as an investment to sidestep regulators. Key attributes:

* CEO works for meta

* almost but not quite a majority stake taken

0: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/world-bank-cuts-u-s-gr...

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#64

Post by eru »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #29
bix6 wrote: post #7

This is a weird deal? Meta buys a non-controlling stake and says no customers will be affected but the CEO and others are leaving Scale for Meta. Meta also says they won’t have access to competitor data but at 49% ownership they get major investor rights? Sounds like an acqui-kill to me?

Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless. You'd have to be a total fool to trust Zuck, especially Zuck who put billions into AR for not much return and now billions into AI to create lackluster lagging models.

> Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless.

Have you seen Oracle?

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#65

Post by Peroni »

lucaslazarus wrote: post #12
bix6 wrote: post #7

This is a weird deal? Meta buys a non-controlling stake and says no customers will be affected but the CEO and others are leaving Scale for Meta. Meta also says they won’t have access to competitor data but at 49% ownership they get major investor rights? Sounds like an acqui-kill to me?

Strikes me more as an attempt to maintain plausible deniability if/when the FTC comes knocking

Yep. They were quite blatant about it in the article:

>The structure was intentional. Executives at Meta and Scale AI were worried about drawing the attention of regulators.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#66

Post by bgwalter »

Is Wikipedia is correct, Scale AI does not work on AGI at all, but has clearly pivoted to surveillance and military applications like so many others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI

A drone army would come in handy for suppressing dissent in the Gulf monarchies or in LA.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#67

Post by lesuorac »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #29
bix6 wrote: post #7

This is a weird deal? Meta buys a non-controlling stake and says no customers will be affected but the CEO and others are leaving Scale for Meta. Meta also says they won’t have access to competitor data but at 49% ownership they get major investor rights? Sounds like an acqui-kill to me?

Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless. You'd have to be a total fool to trust Zuck, especially Zuck who put billions into AR for not much return and now billions into AI to create lackluster lagging models.

> especially Zuck who put billions into AR for not much return

While, it's indisputable about the current state of AR/VR. Zuck has a large exetensial risk to Microsoft/Apple/Google. If those companies want to revoke access to Meta's apps (ex [1]) they can and Zuck is in trouble. At one point Google was trying to compete with FaceBook with Google+ and while that didn't work, it's still a large business risk.

Putting billions into trying to get a moat for your product seems like prudent business sense when you're raking in hundreds of billions.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/01/facebook-google-scandal/

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#68

Post by oidar »

gwbas1c wrote: post #54
bix6 wrote: post #7

This is a weird deal? Meta buys a non-controlling stake and says no customers will be affected but the CEO and others are leaving Scale for Meta. Meta also says they won’t have access to competitor data but at 49% ownership they get major investor rights? Sounds like an acqui-kill to me?

Reverse acquisition? IE, similar to how Disney "bought" Pixar, but much of Pixar's IP overshadows Disney's IP; or how Apple bought Next and the current MacOS is basically NextOS under the hood. It's a technique that companies do to avoid disruption: Buy early stage startups, and by the time they could "disrupt" the parent company, the parent company's management is ready to retire, and the former startup's management…

NeXTSTEP not NextOS

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#69

Post by Peroni »

Illniyar wrote: post #39

Matt Levine suggested that this was an aquihire. And the weird setup where they only buy non voting shares is to not trigger any regulatory review

$14.3 Billion seems excessive for it to be a pure aquihire play. There's undoubtedly some IP acquisition (or at least exclusive access to certain IP) involved.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#70

Post by paganel »

indy wrote: post #11
bix6 wrote: post #7

This is a weird deal? Meta buys a non-controlling stake and says no customers will be affected but the CEO and others are leaving Scale for Meta. Meta also says they won’t have access to competitor data but at 49% ownership they get major investor rights? Sounds like an acqui-kill to me?

Would buying 49% prevent any government investigations into the deal?

If this is marketed as a strategic acquisition for the national interest of the US tech industry in order to counter-act the Chinese trying to catch up on AI then nothing of the sorts will happen.
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