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Happy Juneteenth! The past week has been a steady drip, drip, drip of new details shedding light on Meta Platforms’ $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI and its hiring of the startup’s CEO, Alexandr Wang. The latest eye-opener came this morning in Stephanie and Cory’s profile of a Scale competitor, Surge AI, and its founder, Edwin Chen. In essence, they report, Surge has become the premium brand in data labeling, a business that involves recruiting experts to manually improve the quality of the responses from artificial intelligence models. Their story is filled with details about how Surge’s work has outclassed that of Scale, its data-labeling rival, possibly because Surge more meticulously vets the experts it uses. The quality of Surge’s work has led to some impressive financial results for the company, including more than $1 billion in revenue last year, which exceeds the $870 million Scale generated in the same period. Chen hasn’t raised a nickel from investors, in part because he doesn’t need to: Surge is profitable, unlike Scale. The fact that Surge was apparently beating Scale at its own game makes the timing of Wang’s decision to cut a deal with Meta, which will deliver a huge payday to him and to Scale shareholders, all the more interesting. Wang found the perfect suitor in Meta, which was willing to spend big money to improve its fortunes in AI (check out Cory’s story from earlier this week about Wang’s haggling with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the deal). Perhaps the fact that competitors like Surge were breathing down Scale’s neck added a little extra pressure to Wang’s decision to tap out when he did. And if Scale wasn’t feeling the heat before, the company—which says it will continue to operate independently of Meta—surely is now as customers like OpenAI say they plan to wind down their work with Scale. • President Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. for another 90 days. It’s the third such extension he has signed since he took office. • One of SpaceX’s Starship rockets exploded on the ground during a test in south Texas late Wednesday evening, marking the latest mishap for the company’s largest rocket ever. • Elon Musk’s X plans to soon allow users to make investments or trades on the app, the company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, told the Financial Times. • Eutelsat Communications said it plans to raise 1.35 billion euros ($1.55 billion) in an investment round led by the French government as the company seeks to expand its satellite internet service, a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink. AI Agenda by Stephanie Palazzolo separates hype from reality and explains how AI is transforming industries. The 4x/week newsletter details the innovation and disruption happening in AI, from the AI startup funding frenzy to the major technological breakthroughs that will set the agenda for decades to come. Sign up today. | 
