
Meta Announces Scale AI Investment, Recruits CEO to AI Unit
Meta Platforms Inc. said it finalized a multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI and recruited the startup's chief executive officer to help oversee its artificial intelligence efforts — an unusual deal that signals a heightened push by the social media giant to catch up on AI development.
Meta said Thursday that it has backed Scale, without including details. The size of the investment was $14.3 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The new $29 billion valuation includes the money raised, said the person, who asked not to be idenified discussing private information.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Realty Income Announces 131st Consecutive Monthly Dividend Increase
Realty Income Corporation (NYSE:O) is one of the best stocks for a . On June 10, the company announced a slight increase in its monthly cash dividend on common stock, raising it from $0.2685 to $0.2690 per share. This dividend will be paid on July 15, 2025, to shareholders of record as of July 1, 2025. The adjustment brings the annualized dividend to $3.228 per share, up from $3.222. Sumit Roy, Realty Income Corporation (NYSE:O)'s President and Chief Executive Officer, made the following comment: "The quality and diversification of Realty Income's portfolio allows us to provide investors reliable monthly dividends that increase over time. I'm pleased to share that today's declaration marks the 131st dividend increase since our NYSE listing 30 years ago. During times of market uncertainty, Realty Income remains committed to delivering investors predictable income streams." A member of the S&P index and the S&P Dividend Aristocrats index, Realty Income Corporation (NYSE:O) was founded in 1969 and owns a diversified portfolio of over 15,600 commercial properties across all 50 US states, the U.K., and six additional European countries as of March 31, 2025. The company is recognized for its consistent monthly dividends, having declared 660 in a row, with annual increases for the past 30 years. While we acknowledge the potential of O as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and Disclosure. None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Meta (META) Doubles Down on AI with $29B Bet on Scale AI
June 13 - Meta (NASDAQ:META) has made a hefty investment in Scale AI, valuing the startup at about $29 billion, and will bring Scale's CEO Alexandr Wang into Meta's AI team. Wang will leave his day-to-day role at Scale to focus on AI initiatives at Meta while remaining on Scale's board. The deal comes after reports that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg grew frustrated with the pace of internal AI development, delaying the launch of its latest Llama 4 model amid questions over its advancements. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 5 Warning Sign with META. Meta is forming a superintelligence group near Zuckerberg's Menlo Park office to speed up breakthroughs. Scale AI, known for data annotation and training tools essential for machine learning, will continue its operations under board oversight. Analysts say the tie-up could help Meta enhance model training and data pipelines, narrowing gaps with rivals that have poured resources into large language models and infrastructure. However, execution risks remain, as integrating teams and delivering measurable AI improvements can be challenging. Investors will track how Scale's expertise influences Meta's AI roadmap and whether this move accelerates product enhancements and supports long-term innovation. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How much energy and water does ChatGPT consume?
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, BGR may receive an affiliate commission. Artificial intelligence has been the hottest topic in tech since late 2022, when ChatGPT went viral. The AI race started almost immediately, with every big tech company in the US and elsewhere working on new AI systems of their own. We quickly learned that software like ChatGPT requires massive resources. Datacenters packing thousands of expensive GPUs specialized in training and running AI chatbots were needed. The larger the data centers, the more energy the world would need to set aside for AI projects. Today's Top Deals Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Ring Video Doorbell deals Memorial Day security camera deals: Reolink's unbeatable sale has prices from $29.98 Some people worried about the impact AI infrastructure would have on the world. It wasn't just about the electricity powering the chats, but also the water used to cool some of these data centers. Two and a half years after ChatGPT went viral, we finally know how much energy and power a ChatGPT chat consumes. It comes from Sam Altman's latest blog, titled The Gentle Singularity, which teases what the world could look like in the next five to ten years thanks to superintelligence: People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses; the average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water; roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon. It's unclear where Altman's figure comes from. If accurate, I'll probably consume about a teaspoon of water with AI queries every day. But the figure is also misleading, considering that OpenAI has hundreds of millions of monthly users. Add to that all the energy and water Gemini, Claude, Meta AI, Deep Research, and all the other chatbots out there consume, and you'll rack up quite a bill. It's unclear what prompted the CEO to pen the post, one he describes on X as maybe 'the last one like this I write with no AI help at all.' It likely wasn't to reveal the energy costs associated with ChatGPT chats, though energy is one of the big topics in the blog. On that note, I'll point out that ChatGPT o3 just got dramatically cheaper than before. Unsurprisingly, Altman is quite optimistic about the future of AI. He presents superintelligence as inevitable. It's a foregone conclusion. We'll get to a world where smarter-than-human AI will make our jobs easier than ever, leading to potential massive discoveries to improve daily lives: AI will contribute to the world in many ways, but the gains to quality of life from AI driving faster scientific progress and increased productivity will be enormous; the future can be vastly better than the present. Scientific progress is the biggest driver of overall progress; it's hugely exciting to think about how much more we could have. Altman expects AI to bring novel insights in 2026. A year after that, the world will start getting robots that can do tasks in the wild. Then, 'the 2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come before,' Altman writes. That's even though we, humans, will continue to enjoy our lives as we did before. The OpenAI CEO also says that intelligence and energy will be 'wildly abundant' in the 2030s. Once that happens, the world will be able to do things that weren't possible before. Speaking of energy, Altman also sees datacenter production becoming automated. AI and robots will power everything: There are other self-reinforcing loops at play. The economic value creation has started a flywheel of compounding infrastructure buildout to run these increasingly-powerful AI systems. And robots that can build other robots (and in some sense, datacenters that can build other datacenters) aren't that far off. AI will help humanity achieve new 'wonders' by 2035. Altman even sees a future where some people will choose to 'plug in' via 'true high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces.' It all sounds amazing, and it certainly beats the gloomier pictures others paint about the future of AI. Altman's essay also downplays the downsides, like the massive job revolution we're about to witness. The CEO isn't ready to propose any solution for AI stealing jobs, other than indicating that humans will adapt and some sort of new social contract might emerge: There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand, the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we'll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before. We probably won't adopt a new social contract all at once, but when we look back in a few decades, the gradual changes will have amounted to something big. Toward the end of the post, Altman also addresses the obvious challenges. AI has to be aligned to our interests to give us the rosy future he paints in the previous paragraphs. The other challenge is making sure superintelligence is 'cheap, widely available, and not too concentrated with any person, company, or country.' How will OpenAI and every other firm engaged in developing frontier AI ensure it's safe, cheap, and widely available? Altman doesn't say. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next, while we continue to chat with chatbots like ChatGPT, a fifteenth of a teaspoon of water at a time. Don't Miss: Today's deals: Nintendo Switch games, $5 smart plugs, $150 Vizio soundbar, $100 Beats Pill speaker, more More Top Deals Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2025: Get $2,000+ free See the