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You look at what Meta just did, and you wonder if this is even business as usual.
Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t just announce $15 billion for an AI “superintelligence” group and call it a day, he actually follows through and drops the cash, hires Alexandr Wang, and invest heavily in Scale AI. A lot of people might read that and think Meta has now taken over the race, but what’s really happening here is they’re playing from behind as I see it.
If you were watching the AI evolution, you already know Meta’s models are not the first thing on anyone’s mind. OpenAI and Google get the attention most of the time and Meta’s only claim to fame for a while has been open sourcing Llama.
Hiring Alexandr Wang is the biggest tell.
Before this, Scale was quietly making money selling its data services to almost every big name in tech, and Google was one of the biggest clients. When Meta came in and bought in heavy, Google just shut down the partnership. That’s a suspicious reaction.
Losing Google as a client will matter to Scale, but what Meta gets out of this is way more valuable: direct access to every possible data pipeline and all the inside knowledge Wang collected by being the preferred vendor for all the giants. They’re not even hiding it because Bloomberg literally says, “Wang brings to Meta knowledge of what everyone else is doing.”
You don’t spend that kind of money if you’re already in front, you do it because you’re catching up and you know you need to.
And here’s where I think people tend to get it wrong. This isn’t just about who’s got the fastest or biggest AI model, it’s who controls the data, who gets to hire the right people and who can convince others to join their ecosystem and not the competition.
Meta is spending to buy their way into relevance, and they’re ready to burn whatever they have to. Some people are quick to call this bold, but if you think about it, it’s desperation. When Google backs away from one of their own suppliers, it means they actually feel threatened, not just annoyed.
So yes, this is Meta putting all their chips on the table hoping the tech community forgets how far behind they were. That $15 billion buys Meta a shot at knowing what the rest of the field is planning before it happens.