Meta is paying $14.3 billion to acquire 49 percent of Scale AI and hire its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to revamp its troubled AI efforts. As part of the deal, Wang will report directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and remain on Scale’s board of directors, both companies announced on Thursday. With Wang joining Meta, Scale is naming Jason Droege, its former chief strategy officer, as its new interim CEO. Last month, Zuckerberg said that two of Meta’s top priorities for 2025 are making its ChatGPT rival, Meta AI, “the leading personal AI” and “building full general intelligence.” He recently stated that Meta AI has reached one billion monthly users, although the prominence of the assistant across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook heavily influences this number. In April, Meta released a standalone app for Meta AI, featuring a social feed that showcases how people are using it.