A $14.8 billion investment in Meta’s scale AI will not cause regulatory reviews. | Photo Credit: Francis Mascurenhas
Facebook Owner Meta Scale: $14.8 billion investment in AI and data label startup CEO hiring tests how the Trump administration sees what is called deals. The deal, announced Thursday, was the second-largest investment in the meta so far. Facebook owners use GIG workers to manually label their data and give Scale AI 49% of non-voting stocks, including customer meta competitors Microsoft and ChatGpt Creator Openai.
Unlike acquisitions and transactions that give control over the meta, this transaction does not require review by US antitrust regulators. However, if you believe they are structured to avoid these requirements or to infringe competition, they can look into the deal. The deal appeared to be structured to avoid potential pitfalls, such as reducing access to competitors’ scale services and giving meta an internal view of rival operations. Reuters On Friday, Alphabet’s Google decided to cut ties on scale in light of Meta’s stock, and exclusively reported that other customers are considering taking a step back.
In a statement, an AI spokesperson said businesses that work with major companies and governments are still strong as they work to protect customer data. The company declined to comment on Google’s details.
Alexandr Wang, a 28-year-old CEO who has come to Meta as part of the deal, will remain on a board of size, but with appropriate restrictions centered around access to information. William Kovasick, director of George Washington University’s Competition Law Center, said large tech companies are likely to recognize the regulatory environment of AI partnerships as easy to navigate under President Donald Trump.
Trump’s anti-trust enforcement officials said they didn’t want to regulate how AI would develop, but they also showed suspicions of a large-scale high-tech platform.
“It’s going to make you think they’ll keep a close eye on what the companies are doing. It doesn’t necessarily instruct them to intervene in a way that discourages the relationship,” Kovasic said. The Federal Trade Commission appears to be investigating past “Aquihire” transactions. Under the Biden administration, the FTC sought an Amazon deal to hire top executives and researchers from AI startup Adept and a contract with Microsoft’s $650 million refracted AI. The latter allowed Microsoft to use the Ifferfrenct model and hire most of the startup staff, including co-founders. Amazon’s transactions were closed without further action from regulators. Also, more than a year after the initial investigation, the FTC has so far taken no enforcement action against Microsoft over inflections, but a larger probe is currently underway than practices in the software giant.
An FTC spokesman declined to comment Friday.
David Olson, a professor of antitrust at Boston College Law School, said taking non-voting shares in minority is meta smart.
“I think when someone comes after them, it gives them a lot of protection,” he said. There are skeptics in meta trading. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who is investigating an AI partnership involving Microsoft and Google, said Meta’s investment should be scrutinized.
“Meta can call anything this deal, but if it violates federal law to illegally crush competition or to force Meta to rule illegally, antitrust enforcers must investigate and block it,” she said in a statement Friday. Meta is facing its own exclusive lawsuit by the FTC, but it is still unclear whether the agency will ask questions about investments of scale. The US Department of Justice’s antitrust division, led by former JD Vance Advisor Gail Slater, has recently begun considering whether Google’s partnership with Chatbot Creator Character.AI is designed to avoid antitrust reviews, reported Bloomberg News. DOJ is asking Google to notify in advance of new AI investments as part of its proposal to curb the company’s control in online searches.
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Released on June 14th, 2025
