Scale AI
Data labeling service for AI training and evaluation; provides data for frontier labs.
Total funding—
Valuation$29B
Employees1,300
Founded2016
HeadquartersSan Francisco, USA
San Francisco, USAStatusPrivate
Valuation (est.) — scale.com · 12 Jun 2025Employees (est.) — axios.com · 6 May 2026Founded — en.wikipedia.org · 27 Aug 2026
scale.com
Products
Selected offerings — the AI products recorded here, not the vendor's full catalogue.
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Scale Data Engine Data service
Data labelling and curation service producing training and evaluation sets for AI models.
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Scale Donovan Platform
AI platform for defence and intelligence users, for searching, summarising and reasoning over operational data.
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Scale GenAI Portfolio Platform
Platform for building and evaluating enterprise generative-AI applications against a customer's own data.
Closest alternatives 6
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EncordPrivateEncord's own comparison page.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareSA
Surge AIPrivate · $0 raisedSacra's analyst report on Surge AI names Scale AI as its primary competitive threat in data-labeling infrastructure for model training. Both surge-ai-data and scale-data-engine carry train-a-model.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareM
MercorPrivate · $20BBoth are expert-workforce training-data services for AI labs, named together on Prolific's own Mercor-alternatives page.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSame scale bandSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareSA
Snorkel AIPrivate · $1.3BContrary's business breakdown of Snorkel AI names Scale AI as a direct competitor in the training-data platform market; both companies' flagship data platforms (Snorkel Flow, Scale Data Engine) carry the train-a-model need.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSmaller scaleSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareD
DatabricksPrivate · $190BContrary Research's Competition section names Databricks as an ML-ecosystem competitor to Scale AI. Scale Data Engine and Databricks Model Training both carry train-a-model.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSame scale bandSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareA
AmazonPublic · $2.8TContrary Research names AWS's machine-learning suite as a competing ecosystem to Scale AI's ML tooling. Amazon SageMaker AI is AWS's flagship model-training product and, like Scale Data Engine, carries train-a-model.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompare
EncordPrivateEncord's own comparison page.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareSASurge AIPrivate · $0 raisedSacra's analyst report on Surge AI names Scale AI as its primary competitive threat in data-labeling infrastructure for model training. Both surge-ai-data and scale-data-engine carry train-a-model.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareMMercorPrivate · $20BBoth are expert-workforce training-data services for AI labs, named together on Prolific's own Mercor-alternatives page.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSame scale bandSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareSASnorkel AIPrivate · $1.3BContrary's business breakdown of Snorkel AI names Scale AI as a direct competitor in the training-data platform market; both companies' flagship data platforms (Snorkel Flow, Scale Data Engine) carry the train-a-model need.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSmaller scaleSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareDDatabricksPrivate · $190BContrary Research's Competition section names Databricks as an ML-ecosystem competitor to Scale AI. Scale Data Engine and Databricks Model Training both carry train-a-model.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSame scale bandSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareAAmazonPublic · $2.8TContrary Research names AWS's machine-learning suite as a competing ecosystem to Scale AI's ML tooling. Amazon SageMaker AI is AWS's flagship model-training product and, like Scale Data Engine, carries train-a-model.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleSourced competitorTrain or fine-tune a modelCompareSimilar products 22
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AppenPublicScale Data Engine and Off-the-Shelf Datasets do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Appen's scale not recorded.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareT
TolokaPrivateScale Data Engine and Off-the-shelf Datasets do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Toloka's scale not recorded.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareHA
Hume AIPrivateScale Data Engine and Data Solutions do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Hume AI's scale not recorded.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareT
TuringPrivate · $2.2BScale Data Engine and Turing Frontier AI do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; smaller scale (private).2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSmaller scaleCompareL
LabelboxPrivate · $189M raisedScale Data Engine and Terra do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; similar scale (private).3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareS
SamaPrivateScale Data Engine and Sama Annotate do comparable work on data labelling; Sama's scale not recorded.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareP
ProlificPrivateScale Data Engine and Prolific do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Prolific's scale not recorded.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareH
HandshakePrivateScale Data Engine and Handshake AI do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Handshake's scale not recorded.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareM
Micro1PrivateScale Data Engine and micro1 Data Engine do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Micro1's scale not recorded.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareH
HumanSignalPrivateScale Data Engine and Label Studio Enterprise do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; HumanSignal's scale not recorded.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareIT
Invisible TechnologiesPrivate · $144M raisedScale Data Engine and Invisible AI Training do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; similar scale (private).3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareN
NVIDIAPublic · $5.1TScale Data Engine and NVIDIA Isaac both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public).3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleCompareA
AlibabaPublic · $273.4BScale Data Engine and Alibaba Cloud Platform for AI (PAI) do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public).1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleCompareI
IntelPublic · $463.7BScale Data Engine and Intel Geti do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public).1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleCompareC
CrusoePrivate · $10BScale Data Engine and Serverless Fine-Tuning both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; ships API service, developer tool and 2 more rather than the same layer.1 of 4 capabilitiesDifferent layerSame scale bandCompareCC
Cactus ComputePrivateScale Data Engine and Cactus Platform both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Cactus Compute's scale not recorded.Shared product typeCompareHF
Hugging FacePrivate · $4.5BScale Data Engine and Hugging Face Jobs both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; smaller scale (private).Shared product typeSmaller scaleCompareB
BasetenPrivate · $13BScale Data Engine and Baseten Training both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; same layer and the same scale band (late-stage private).Shared product typeSame scale bandCompareM
ModalPrivate · $466M raisedScale Data Engine and Modal Notebooks both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; similar scale (private); ships developer tool and infrastructure service rather than the same layer.Different layerCompareTA
Together AIPrivate · $8.3BScale Data Engine and Together Fine-Tuning both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; smaller scale (private); ships API service, developer tool and 2 more rather than the same layer.Different layerSmaller scaleCompareFA
Fireworks AIPrivate · $17.5BScale Data Engine and Fireworks Training both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; ships API service and model API rather than the same layer.Different layerSame scale bandCompareNG
Nebius GroupPublic · $61.6BScale Data Engine and Managed Service for MLflow both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public); ships developer tool, infrastructure service and 1 more rather than the same layer.1 of 4 capabilitiesDifferent layerLarger scaleCompare
AppenPublicScale Data Engine and Off-the-Shelf Datasets do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Appen's scale not recorded.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareTTolokaPrivateScale Data Engine and Off-the-shelf Datasets do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Toloka's scale not recorded.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareHAHume AIPrivateScale Data Engine and Data Solutions do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Hume AI's scale not recorded.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareTTuringPrivate · $2.2BScale Data Engine and Turing Frontier AI do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; smaller scale (private).2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSmaller scaleCompareLLabelboxPrivate · $189M raisedScale Data Engine and Terra do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; similar scale (private).3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareSSamaPrivateScale Data Engine and Sama Annotate do comparable work on data labelling; Sama's scale not recorded.3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeComparePProlificPrivateScale Data Engine and Prolific do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Prolific's scale not recorded.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareHHandshakePrivateScale Data Engine and Handshake AI do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Handshake's scale not recorded.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareMMicro1PrivateScale Data Engine and micro1 Data Engine do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Micro1's scale not recorded.2 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareHHumanSignalPrivateScale Data Engine and Label Studio Enterprise do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; HumanSignal's scale not recorded.1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareITInvisible TechnologiesPrivate · $144M raisedScale Data Engine and Invisible AI Training do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; similar scale (private).3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeCompareNNVIDIAPublic · $5.1TScale Data Engine and NVIDIA Isaac both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public).3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleCompareAAlibabaPublic · $273.4BScale Data Engine and Alibaba Cloud Platform for AI (PAI) do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public).1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleCompareIIntelPublic · $463.7BScale Data Engine and Intel Geti do comparable work on data labelling; both also serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public).1 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeLarger scaleCompareCCrusoePrivate · $10BScale Data Engine and Serverless Fine-Tuning both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; ships API service, developer tool and 2 more rather than the same layer.1 of 4 capabilitiesDifferent layerSame scale bandCompareCCCactus ComputePrivateScale Data Engine and Cactus Platform both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; Cactus Compute's scale not recorded.Shared product typeCompareHFHugging FacePrivate · $4.5BScale Data Engine and Hugging Face Jobs both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; smaller scale (private).Shared product typeSmaller scaleCompareBBasetenPrivate · $13BScale Data Engine and Baseten Training both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; same layer and the same scale band (late-stage private).Shared product typeSame scale bandCompareMModalPrivate · $466M raisedScale Data Engine and Modal Notebooks both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; similar scale (private); ships developer tool and infrastructure service rather than the same layer.Different layerCompareTATogether AIPrivate · $8.3BScale Data Engine and Together Fine-Tuning both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; smaller scale (private); ships API service, developer tool and 2 more rather than the same layer.Different layerSmaller scaleCompareFAFireworks AIPrivate · $17.5BScale Data Engine and Fireworks Training both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; ships API service and model API rather than the same layer.Different layerSame scale bandCompareNGNebius GroupPublic · $61.6BScale Data Engine and Managed Service for MLflow both serve buyers who need to train or fine-tune a model; larger scale (public); ships developer tool, infrastructure service and 1 more rather than the same layer.1 of 4 capabilitiesDifferent layerLarger scaleCompareClosest alternatives are pairs a vendor page itself compares. Similar products are matched from what each product does; nothing in that group is asserted as a rivalry.
Sources
- Total funding
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Checked — none published
Was $15.9B, cited to tracxn.com (nulled 2026-08-28). Same ground as moonshot-ai in the same commit -- the aggregator-refusal rule extended from headcount to funding data. No primary source or named press citation found for a cumulative total; re-check against a funding announcement or SEC-style filing rather than an aggregator.
- Valuation
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Founder, Alexandr Wang, Joins Meta to Work on AI Efforts, Scale AI, 2025-06-12. post-money valuation of the round dated 2025-06-12. Read via stockanalysis.com's citation for this figure on 2026-08-27.
- Employees
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Scale AI CEO Jason Droege pushes "reliability" reality, Axios, 2026-05-06. Read via stockanalysis.com's citation for this figure on 2026-08-27.
- Founded
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Wikipedia infobox "founded" field, read 2026-08-27.
Open Scale AI in the directory
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