Meta has agreed to spend $14.8 billion on a 49 percent stake in data labeling firm Scale AI, The Information reports.

The deal has yet to be finalized, but would have an unusual structure. The funds would be used to pay Scale's existing shareholders, and then see the startup’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, take a major role at Meta. Wang would be part of a broader AI reorganization at Meta.

At the same time, Scale shareholders would maintain their existing holdings, with the company valued at $28bn, up from $13.8bn.

Wang would join a new “superintelligence” lab, taking with him a number of Scale's best technical employees, the New York Times and Bloomberg report.

Scale launched in 2016 as a way for humans to label data and clean up AI responses, initially for self-driving and other pre-generative models, but has since grown aggressively with the rise of large language models. Now, workers help models sound more human.

The company works with OpenAI and Alphabet, with the future of these relationships unclear. Should the deal go through, chief strategy officer Jason Droege is in the running to take over as CEO.

As for the superintelligence lab, Bloomberg reports Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally reached out to researchers to convince them to join. The team is expected to grow to around 50 people, including a new head of AI research. He has rearranged desks at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters so the new staff will sit near him.

The move is part of a broader ongoing reshuffle of Meta's AI efforts. Chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, a celebrated researcher, has openly criticized the capabilities of LLMs and said true artificial general intelligence would need a different approach.

Other AI teams at Meta have seen high staff turnover due to the pace of releases and company infighting.