After Meta’s $14.3 billion bet on Scale AI, OpenAI and other partners are quietly winding down their data relationships with Scale to avoid handing their AI training pipelines over to a rival.
OpenAI has long tapped Scale for high-quality training data, but according to Bloomberg, it was already dialing back that usage before Meta(NASDAQ:META) swooped in and brought Scale’s CEO Alexandr Wang onto its superintelligence team. OpenAI insists Scale only ever met a small fraction of its data needs.
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and xAIElon Musk’s AI outfithave similarly told Reuters they’ll phase out Scale after Meta’s deal. This contrasts with OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar’s recent VivaTech remark that acquisitions shouldn’t lead AI firms to ice each other out, or else they risk slowing innovation.
Data providers like Scale sit at the heart of AI model trainingand when your data supplier is now part of a direct competitor’s operation, it creates an undeniable conflict. As the big players scramble to secure independent data sources, smaller providers and startups may find themselves squeezed or forced to pivot rapidly, reshaping the AI data-supply landscape.
Watch for where OpenAI, Google and xAI turn next for training data and whether this pullback triggers consolidation among annotation and data-labeling startups. The fallout will help map how strategic partnerships evolve in the race for AI dominance.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
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