Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is in advanced talks to invest billions of dollars in Scale AI, a start-up focused on data used by artificial intelligence companies, according to two sources.

The potential investment is a sign that large tech companies remain interested in start-ups focused on AI amid a heated contest to be a leader in the technology. If an investment happens, it will be an outlier for Meta, which typically does not invest in outside companies.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has pushed heavily into AI in recent years. Since OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, Zuckerberg has leaned into incorporating AI across Meta’s products, including in smart glasses and a recently released app, Meta AI.

Founded in San Francisco by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo in 2016, Scale AI built a business with armies of contract workers who sift through vast amounts of data, labeling and “cleaning” the information to make it easier to use to train AI systems. Scale sells its services to companies such as Microsoft, Cohere, Etsy and OpenAI.

Scale AI has raised more than $1 billion from a mix of investors, including the venture capital firms Index Ventures and Founders Fund.

More recently, Scale AI has worked to build its enterprise and public sector businesses, dispatching consultants and engineers to work with companies and governments to help build programs that use AI.

In recent years, Meta has encouraged programmers to use its freely available open-source AI models to build AI apps across the private and public sectors.

In November, Meta announced that it would allow US government agencies and contractors working on national security to use its AI models for military purposes, a shift from its previous policy. The company teamed up with the defence contractors Booz Allen and Lockheed Martin on the initiatives, along with start-ups, including Scale.

New York Times News Service