Scale AI S Verified

RL environment company · Coding

Domains
Coding Computer Use Enterprise Workflows Long-Horizon Multi-Domain
On X
@scale_ai ↗
Funding
$15B raised · Y Combinator S16 · rounds and investors
Tier
S why
Snapshot

Open environment ↗scale.com

What Scale AI does

Scale AI sells expert-sourced training data and evaluations to frontier model builders, and builds and operates AI systems for enterprises and government.

Leads with
Several domains (a generalist)
Based in
San Francisco, USA
Team
200+

What Scale AI sells

Read from Scale AI's own website, checked October 12, 2026: the line that puts it in each category.

RL environments

  • Evals

    “Benchmarking the frontier of AI capability with expert-level evaluations.”
    scale.com ↗

Data

  • Human data

    “We source contributors with precision (25% have advanced degrees) and deliver at the bar frontier AI demands.”
    scale.com ↗

Also

Domains Scale AI covers

Benchmarks Scale AI built or runs

Scale AI competitors and alternatives

The companies that sell the most of the same things in the same domains, and what they share with Scale AI.

Every RL environment company on the landscape map →

Tier S

S

Category leader: 200+ people, $100M+ raised or a $1B+ valuation.

How much stands behind a tier: usage, who backs it, a confirmed line from its own site or paper, and a clear read on X. High with three of the four, medium with two, low otherwise.

  • team 200+
  • raised $15.4B
  • valued $29B
  • investors: Meta Platforms, Accel, Amazon
  • went through Y Combinator Summer 2016
  • in curated RL directories (5 pts)

On X · unclear, low buzz, from 7 posts about Scale AI in the last month

Mentions are mostly about Alexandr Wang's founder story and Meta role, plus gig-work listings for Outlier; little discussion of Scale's current products or quality.

@iamsupersocks ↗ · @raycrypto_01 ↗ · @Jack_FluxAI ↗

How we got to tier S
  1. Adoption: team 200+; raised $15.4B; valued $29B; investors: Meta Platforms, Accel, Amazon; went through Y Combinator Summer 2016. Tier S.
  2. On X: unclear, low buzz. “Mentions are mostly about Alexandr Wang's founder story and Meta role, plus gig-work listings for Outlier; little discussion of Scale's current products or quality.” No move.
  3. In curated RL directories: 5 points, a floor of C.
  4. Confirmed: a line from its own site or paper places it.

A clear view on X moves a tier one step up or down; most entries don't move. How tiers work.

Scale AI funding

Raised
$15Bsum of the rounds below
Latest round
Strategic investment $14B2025-06 · led by Meta
Valuation
$14B2024-05
Accelerator
Y Combinator S16

Backed byY Combinator Summer 2016AccelIndex VenturesDragoneer Investment GroupGreenoaksTiger Global ManagementAMD VenturesCisco Investments

Rounds

  • Strategic investment · $14B · 2025-06 · led by Meta
    In June 2025, Meta Platforms spent more than $14 billion to acquire a 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI.
    1. Read: “In June 2025, Meta Platforms spent more than $14 billion to acquire a 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI.”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
    3. The quote states the amount and who led it
    4. Also named by 3 other pages read
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
  • Series F+ · $1B at a $14B valuation · 2024-05 · led by Accel
    Today, we’re announcing that Scale has closed a $1B financing transaction at a $13.8B valuation. The financing, a mix of primary and secondary, is led by existing investor Accel
    1. Read: “Today, we’re announcing that Scale has closed a $1B financing transaction at a $13.8B valuation. The financing, a mix of primary and secondary, is led by existing investor Accel”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. The quote states the amount and who led it
    4. Also named by 5 other pages read
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Series E · $325M at a $7.3B valuation · 2021
    In 2021, it had raised $325 million in a series E funding round that reportedly valued it at about $7.3 billion.
    1. Read: “In 2021, it had raised $325 million in a series E funding round that reportedly valued it at about $7.3 billion.”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-funding-2024-05-21
    3. The quote states the amount; no lead is named in it
    4. Also named by 1 other page read
    reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-fund…
  • Funding round · $100M · 2019-08
    In August 2019, after Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund made a $100million investment in Scale, the company's valuation exceeded $1billion
    1. Read: “In August 2019, after Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund made a $100million investment in Scale, the company's valuation exceeded $1billion”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
    3. The quote states the amount; no lead is named in it
    4. No other page or directory names it yet
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
  • Series B · $18M · 2018-08 · led by Index Ventures
    Scale raised $18M in Series B funding led by Index Ventures with Accel, Y Combinator, Drew Houston, and Justin Kan joining.
    1. Read: “Scale raised $18M in Series B funding led by Index Ventures with Accel, Y Combinator, Drew Houston, and Justin Kan joining.”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/series-b
    3. The quote states the amount and who led it
    4. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/series-b
  • Series A · $4.5M · 2017-07 · led by Accel
    we have raised a $4.5 million Series A round of funding led by Accel
    1. Read: “we have raised a $4.5 million Series A round of funding led by Accel”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/announcing-our-series-a-with-accel
    3. The quote states the amount and who led it
    4. Also named by 1 other page read
    scale.com/blog/announcing-our-series-a-with-accel

Accelerator

  • Y Combinator Summer 2016
    1. Y Combinator's company directory lists Scale AI with the website scale.com, in its Summer 2016 batch
    2. Checkable on YC's page: ycombinator.com/companies/scale-ai
    3. 4 pages read also name Y Combinator
    ycombinator.com/companies/scale-ai

Funds 12

  • Accel led a round

    Named in the round quoted above.

  • Index Ventures led a round

    Named in the round quoted above.

  • Spark Capital
    Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA
    1. Read: “Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. Also named by 1 other page read
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Dragoneer Investment Group led a round
    after a financing led by Greenoaks, Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management
    1. Read: “after a financing led by Greenoaks, Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
    3. Also named by a curated directory
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
  • Greenoaks led a round
    after a financing led by Greenoaks, Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management
    1. Read: “after a financing led by Greenoaks, Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
    3. Also named by 1 other page read
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
  • Tiger Global Management led a round
    after a financing led by Greenoaks, Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management
    1. Read: “after a financing led by Greenoaks, Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
    3. Also named by 2 other pages read and a curated directory
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_AI
  • Coatue
    Other high-profile investors who participated in the latest round of funding for Scale included Coatue, Tiger Global Management, Intel Capital, and AMD Ventures.
    1. Read: “Other high-profile investors who participated in the latest round of funding for Scale included Coatue, Tiger Global Management, Intel Capital, and AMD Ventures.”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-funding-2024-05-21
    3. Also named by 1 other page read
    reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-fund…
  • DFJ Growth
    new investors: Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital
    1. Read: “new investors: Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Founders Fund

    Named in the round quoted above.

  • Thrive Capital
    Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA
    1. Read: “Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • WCM
    Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon
    1. Read: “Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Wellington Management
    Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management
    1. Read: “Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f

Angels 4

  • Drew Houston

    Named in the round quoted above.

  • Elad Gil
    WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, Meta, and Qualcomm Ventures
    1. Read: “WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, Meta, and Qualcomm Ventures”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Justin Kan

    Named in the round quoted above.

  • Nat Friedman
    nearly all of our existing investors participating: Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management.
    1. Read: “nearly all of our existing investors participating: Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management.”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f

Corporate investors 8

  • AMD Ventures
    Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon
    1. Read: “Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. Also named by 3 other pages read
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Cisco Investments
    We also are excited to welcome new investors: Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, Meta, and Qualcomm Ventures.
    1. Read: “We also are excited to welcome new investors: Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, Meta, and Qualcomm Ventures.”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. Also named by 4 other pages read
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Intel Capital
    new investors: Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital
    1. Read: “new investors: Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. Also named by 5 other pages read
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • Amazon
    led by venture capital firm Accel with participation from tech giants Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, Amazon
    1. Read: “led by venture capital firm Accel with participation from tech giants Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, Amazon”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-funding-2024-05-21
    3. Also named by 3 other pages read and a curated directory
    reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-fund…
  • Meta

    Named in the round quoted above.

  • NVIDIA
    led by venture capital firm Accel with participation from tech giants Nvidia
    1. Read: “led by venture capital firm Accel with participation from tech giants Nvidia”
    2. Found word for word on a page found by search: reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-funding-2024-05-21
    3. Also named by 1 other page read and a curated directory
    reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-scale-ai-raises-1-billion-fresh-fund…
  • Qualcomm Ventures
    WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, Meta, and Qualcomm Ventures
    1. Read: “WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, Meta, and Qualcomm Ventures”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
  • ServiceNow Ventures
    Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon
    1. Read: “Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon”
    2. Found word for word on its own site: scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f
    3. No other page or directory names it yet
    scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f

Every figure is quoted from its own site, its accelerator or a funding announcement; a round's amount and lead appear only when its quote states them. Startup databases are never used as evidence. Checked 2026-10-11. How funding is checked.

Training methods

Methods Scale AI uses, offers or builds for, with public evidence: its own website says so, or two independent sites do.

  • RLHF Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback On its own website

    “Text2SQL systems promise to democratize access to enterprise data but often fail to handle the complexity of real-world database queries, even if they perform well on test datasets. We found that Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a viable approach for active learning from incorrect production queries to improve Text2SQL accuracy.”

    scale.com

    “RLHF tasks are structured datasets used to train and fine-tune Large Language Models (LLMs) using human feedback. These tasks help align model behavior with human preferences by providing paired responses with clear preferen…”

    docs.genai.scale.com
  • RLVR Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards On its own website

    “The Future of AI Learning Environments: Verifiable Reward + Multi-Agent Interaction”

    scale.com
  • DPO Direct Preference Optimization On its own website

    “…rovides targeted, natural language guidance based on the specific error, suggesting a plan or pointing to relevant files. The student agent then re-attempts the task with this guidance. The policy is updated via offline DPO, learning from the successful guided trajectories to prefer correct solutions. - What We Found: - Agent-RLVR is highly effective, elevating the performance of a 72B parameter model on the SWE-Bench benchmark from a 9.4%…”

    scale.com
  • GRPO Group Relative Policy Optimization On its own website

    “…enuinely new knowledge). Based on this key insight, our method Guide introduces a "teacher" that provides targeted hints only when a "student" model fails all of its attempts at a problem. The training algorithm ( Guide-GRPO ) then uses off-policy corrections to ensure the student learns to solve problems independently, without guidance, at test time. - What We Found: - We confirmed that learning in RLVR is primarily driven by self-distilla…”

    scale.com

    “Improving Multi-Turn Tool Use with GRPO: Results and Insights”

    labs.scale.com
  • SFT Supervised Fine-Tuning On its own website

    “…d the BIRD dataset, we demonstrate that RLHF with a hybrid reward model—which combines database execution and LLM evaluation—can improve SQL generation accuracy. Our approach achieves better performance than traditional supervised fine-tuning across most complexity levels by using 75% of training data for fine-tuning and 25% for RLHF with augmentation.”

    scale.com

    “RLHF tasks can be followed by an SFT stage where the preferred model’s response is rewritten”

    docs.genai.scale.com

Where Scale AI sits

Its domain on the map, live. Hover a logo for its name; click to open it. Open it on the full map

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Latest from Scale AI on X

@scale_ai ↗

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