Meta’s Risky Scale AI Bet Shows Self-Assurance—or Hubris
Mark Zuckerberg seems confident! As we reported earlier today, Meta Platforms is on the cusp of taking a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.8 billion and bringing the AI startup’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, on board to lead a new AI lab. There are echoes in the Meta–Scale AI talks of earlier deals between big tech companies and AI startups, including Google’s agreement with Character.AI and Microsoft’s deal with Inflection.
Both of those deals—which brought the AI startups’ founders to the big tech companies in exchange for cash that went to the startups’ investors—were able to at least initially sidestep the regulatory scrutiny that conventional acquisitions are subject to.
By avoiding taking majority control of Scale AI, Meta appears to believe it, too, can fly under the radar of the feds. Maybe it can. After all, we haven’t heard much lately about a Federal Trade Commission probe into the structure of big tech companies’ investments in generative AI startups. That effort, announced in January 2024, came under the agency’s previous chair, Lina Khan. In contrast, President Donald Trump’s administration has made U.S. supremacy in AI a top priority, and his FTC may not be as keen to pick apart AI deals as its predecessor was.
On the other hand, the FTC and its current chair, Andrew Ferguson, don’t exactly have a lot of affection for Meta. The agency just wrapped up an antitrust trial against the company and is awaiting a verdict in the case, which could result in an order to break up Meta. And in May, Bloomberg reported that the Justice Department is looking into whether Google structured its Character.AI deal to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment on the status of the AI probe from last year or whether the agency might look into a Meta–Scale AI deal. But a former FTC official from the last administration told The Information they were confident that if Khan was still in charge of the FTC, it would have prepared a subpoena for Meta and Scale AI once they announced a deal.
Tesla’s Robo Debut
Tesla’s long-anticipated test of its robotaxi service finally got rolling in Austin, Texas. A video clip began circulating on social media Tuesday showing a black Model Y with a robotaxi logo on its door driving through an intersection in the Texas city without a person in its driver’s seat. Tesla executives, including Elon Musk, appeared to confirm the authenticity of the clip by reposting it on their X accounts. “Beautifully simple design,” Musk wrote.
Tesla, of course, has much work to do before it has a functional robotaxi service. In the clip, a second Tesla Model Y without the robotaxi logo followed closely behind the driverless vehicle, leading to speculation that it was a “chase car” keeping tabs on the robotaxi for safety reasons. Having a companion vehicle follow around Tesla robotaxis isn’t going to be practical or profitable for the service in the long term. Or perhaps the second vehicle was simply there to film the robotaxi for promotion on social media. Either way, spotting driverless Teslas in the wild is likely to become a common new pastime in Austin.