Meta, Scale, and the Future of AI Labeling: Did Zuck Just Kill a Category? | E2139
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s show:
Meta just took a 49% stake in Scale AI, and the shockwaves are hitting the entire AI ecosystem. In this episode, @Jason and @alex unpack the deal’s implications: Google ($150M customer!) and others are fleeing Scale, worried Meta will hoard its RLHF infrastructure and cut off competitors. Startups like Labelbox, Turing, and Handshake are already seeing a demand surge. Is this smart vertical integration or anti-competitive overreach? Jason shares tactical advice for founders on how to capitalize when incumbents stumble—hire ex-Scale talent, build “Scale AI alternative” SEO pages, and hit the podcast circuit. Don’t miss this deep dive into AI’s shifting power dynamics.
Timestamps:
(04:01) Is Jason becoming an AI doomer?!
(9:52) OpenPhone - Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at www.openphone.com/twist
(13:47) PostHog, and when is it okay for founders to break the rules?
(20:56) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist
(25:50) Why the Navy is recruiting startups
(30:12) Pilot - Visit https://www.pilot.com/twist and get $1,200 off your first year.
(39:09) Did Zuck buy Scale in order to keep it from competitors?
(56:08) When does incentivizing customers turn into burning capital?
(1:04) How raising too much money could KILL your startup!
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(9:52) OpenPhone - Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at www.openphone.com/twist
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(30:52) Pilot - Visit https://www.pilot.com/twist and get $1,200 off your first year.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | and they rewrite it. |
| 0:01.6 | They would literally go into the answer |
| 0:03.0 | and change the answer and polish it. |
| 0:05.1 | And they would send that to two finance people |
| 0:07.3 | and then look for, |
| 0:08.7 | okay, is it clean, right? |
| 0:09.6 | You do a double blind kind of situation. |
| 0:11.5 | Yep. |
| 0:12.0 | That's what Scalii was doing all this time |
| 0:14.4 | and they were making more and more money from it. |
| 0:16.9 | So now the question is, |
| 0:18.2 | is meta going to just turn that off |
| 0:20.5 | and just say, we're not going to provide that to other people? We're just going to use it for our own needs. And that would make sense for them to do it, but it would also be super anti-competitive. And I'm sure this, I don't know what's going on with M&A. We talked about it, I think, last week on Friday, maybe even. And, you know, as I said, |
| 0:39.4 | I just look at the game on the field. Everything's, all these things are happening. So, |
| 0:43.0 | maybe they're just going to get a pass. But that would be a thing to look at. |
| 0:49.3 | Did Zuckerberg buy this to kill it? |
| 0:53.8 | This weekend startups is brought to you by Open Phone. |
| 0:57.6 | Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenFone. |
| 1:00.6 | You can 20% off your first six months at openphone.com slash twist. |
| 1:05.0 | Vanta. |
| 1:05.9 | Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. |
| 1:09.6 | Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a |
... |
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