Overview

• Scale AI laid off roughly 200 full-time employees and 500 contractors, representing 14% of its global workforce, in its GenAI division.
• Layoffs targeted teams supporting major AI chatbot projects for xAI’s Grok and Google’s Gemini after an internal review deemed capacity excessive.
• Affected staff will receive regular pay through September 15 and at least four weeks of additional pay upon signing severance agreements.
• Meta’s $14.3 billion purchase of a 49% stake prompted major clients, including Google, to pause projects and included the hiring of founder Alexandr Wang to lead Meta Superintelligence Labs.
• Scale AI plans to invest in and hire for its enterprise, public sector, and government AI units to drive growth in more profitable markets.