US technology company Scale AI announced on Monday that it has established a UAE office at the Dubai International Financial Centre.
Scale AI, founded in 2016, is valued at $29 billion and has more than 1,000 employees. The official announcement that it is to have a presence in the UAE was made at a signing ceremony during the Dubai AI Festival.
Trevor Thompson, global managing director at the AI infrastructure company, reflected on the company's decision to expand into the country, saying it has set a "clear, ambitious vision for AI and is now putting it to work across government and the economy". He added that Scale AI's plans will work well with the UAE's ambitions for the technology.
"Making our home at DIFC is a long-term commitment," he said. "We are here to help UAE institutions build AI they can trust and use for their most critical use cases and important decisions."
The company lists Meta, Cisco, Instacart, Nvidia, Cohere, OpenAI, Microsoft and Time, as well as the US Air Force and US Army, among its clients. Scale AI makes the tools other technology companies use to increase the reliability of their AI solutions. Its software assists with identifying items in images, tagging subjects within large amounts of text and labelling that information so it can be used in AI apps and chatbots.
The company says its largely automated software allows humans to easily review and make changes to ensure accuracy.
Scale AI’s footprint continues to grow as buzz surrounding the self-described "data-centric end-to-end solution" AI infrastructure company shows no sign of slowing. Essentially, if a company needs reliable and well-organised data to help create a large language model, Scale AI has become the go-to expert.
It was founded by Alexandr Wang shortly after he dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he saw AI developments creating the need for ways to provide and manage high-quality training data for technology companies and other large businesses.
Scale AI’s rapid rise has also carried Mr Wang into the rarefied air of AI tech entrepreneurs including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Mr Wang has graced the cover of magazines and testified before the US Congress.
In June, he left the company for Meta after the social media company announced a significant investment in Scale AI. Mr Wang officially serves in the capacity of chief AI officer for Meta and has since been charged with developing its consumer-facing AI products such as Muse, Muse Image and various language models.
After Mr Wang's departure, Scale AI named Jason Droege as the company's interim chief executive before announcing in July that Francis deSouza, Google Cloud's former chief operating officer, would be Mr Wang's official successor.
According to Scale AI's media release, the company's UAE branch is based in the Dubai AI Campus at DIFC, part of the Dubai Universal Blueprint for Artificial Intelligence, "which brings together infrastructure, business support and international connections for AI companies building in Dubai".
