OpenAI said it will continue working with Scale AI after Meta Platforms Inc. made a multibillion-dollar investment in the startup, as it seeks to maintain a broad ecosystem of data sources.

Scale AI built its business on the labor of gig workers. But those workers likely won't benefit from their new deal with Meta.

The AI startup’s biggest clients, which include OpenAI and Google, won’t likely want to trust their data to a company almost half owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s tech empire.

Meta Platform Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to shape up the company’s artificial-intelligence ambitions took a step forward with an investment in ScaleAI and the poaching of its founder. Meta’s investment values the data-labeling AI startup at over $29 billion,

Meta agreed to pay $14.8 billion for a 49 percent stake in the AI data firm Scale AI, which will give the company access to talent and data services.

Dystopian thriller “Soylent Green” ends with the hero discovering that the mystery food that sustains New York’s citizens, and whose name the movie bears, is actually made of human beings. Reports that Meta Platforms may acquire 49 per cent of artificial intelligence company Scale AI for $15bn illustrate a similar plot twist. AI, too, is people.

Meta’s decision to create an ambitious new “superintelligence” AI research lab headed by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang is a bold bid for relevance in its fierce AI battle with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.