Scale AI built its business labeling the images and data that train machine-learning models, then pivoted hard into defense. Its Donovan platform fuses classified and open-source intelligence for military decision-making and targeting, and it is prime contractor on the Pentagon's 'Thunderforge' agentic-AI program. In June 2025 Meta took a roughly 49% stake for about $14.3 billion (valuing Scale near $29 billion) and founder Alexandr Wang left to run Meta's superintelligence lab; several rival AI labs pulled back their work and the company cut staff, installing former Google Cloud executive Francis deSouza as CEO in 2026.
Scale AI won multimillion-dollar defense deals to apply its data-labeling and Donovan platform to military intelligence and targeting, putting a consumer AI-labeling firm at the center of automated warfare.