Scale AI (incl. Remotasks, Outlier)

Data vendor, HQ United States, founded 2016. Built a Physical AI Data Engine (data factories, at-home egocentric collectors, teleoperated robots) and partnered with Universal Robots in March 2026; Remotasks long did lidar labeling, including in Kenya before it cut off Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan in March 2024. Meta took a 49% stake in June 2025 and CEO Alexandr Wang left for Meta, replaced by Jason Droege.

Data it collects

Workers in

IndiaKenyaPhilippinesPolandThailandUnited StatesVenezuelaVietnam

Known buyers

Scale

• more than 100,000 hours of egocentric footage (2026-04-01)
• More than 100,000 production hours completed at its San Francisco prototyping lab (2025-09-24)
• More than 150,000 hours of physical AI data delivered and 10 new robotics customers in 2025 (2026-01-22)
• MIT Technology Review: Scale announced it had gathered more than 100,000 hours of robotics data (2026-04-01)

Pay

• Remotasks taskers in the Philippines 'often earn far below the minimum wage' (Washington Post, Aug 2023). No published pay figure found for Scale's robotics data collectors.
• $0.68 to $0.85/h Remotasks annotators, Cagayan de Oro equaltimes.org ↗ Secondary

Events

• 2026-10 Scale AI sells physical AI demonstration data scale.com ↗ Secondary
• 2026-08-04 Scale AI agrees $12.5M misclassification settlement kingsiegel.com ↗ Secondary
• 2025-07-16 Scale AI cuts 14% of staff and 500 contractors storyboard18.com ↗ Secondary
• 2025-06-12 Meta takes 49% of Scale AI; Google plans exit techcrunch.com ↗ Major outlet
• 2025-04-24 Filipino self-driving annotators report halved pay equaltimes.org ↗ Secondary
• 2024-12-10 McKinney class action against Scale AI sfexaminer.com ↗ Major outlet
• 2024-05-22 97 Kenyan AI workers write to President Biden foxglove.org.uk ↗ Major outlet
• 2024-03-28 Remotasks halts new sign-ups in Thailand, Vietnam and Poland restofworld.org ↗ Major outlet
• 2024-03-07 Remotasks exits Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan restofworld.org ↗ Major outlet
• 2023-08-30 Washington Post: Remotasks digital sweatshops in the Philippines stripes.com ↗ Major outlet
• 2022-04-20 MIT Tech Review: How the AI industry profits from catastrophe technologyreview.com ↗ Major outlet

Sources

• Scale AI outsources data labeling through its subsidiaries, Remotasks, which focuses on computer vision and autonomous vehicleswikipedia.org ↗ Secondary 2026-10-05
• Founded in 2016 by young college dropouts and backed by some $600 million in venture capitalstripes.com ↗ Major outlet 2023-08-28
• Scale's Data Engine for Physical AI is a comprehensive data collection and annotation solutionscale.com ↗ Company claim 2025-09-24
• More than 100,000 production hours completed at our prototyping laboratory in San Franciscoscale.com ↗ Company claim 2025-09-24
• delivering more than 150,000 hours of data and onboarding 10 new robotics customersscale.com ↗ Company claim 2026-01-22
• Tele-operated demonstrations from industry-leading robotsscale.com ↗ Company claim 2026-10-05
• Robotless egocentric platform designed for distributed dextrous collectionscale.com ↗ Company claim 2026-10-05
• At-home collection with globally-distributed collectorsscale.com ↗ Company claim 2026-10-05
• Since 2017, thousands of Filipinos are estimated to have been involved in training the algorithms for the driverless taxisequaltimes.org ↗ Secondary 2025-04-24
• Remotasks has shut down entirely in Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan over the last monthrestofworld.org ↗ Major outlet 2024-03-28

Every row links to its source, and hovering a link shows the quote it rests on. Research compiled 2026-10-05. Method