AI Daily: Meta to pay nearly $15B for 49% stake in Scale AI

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

STAKE IN SCALE AI: Meta (META) has agreed to take a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.8B, The Information’s Cory Weinberg reports. According to two people familiar with the matter, the deal will be structured so Meta will send the cash to Scale’s existing shareholders and put the startup’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, in a top position inside Meta.

SUPERINTELLIGENCE AI TEAM: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is setting up a team of experts to achieve “artificial general intelligence,” or machines that can match or surpass human capabilities, Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner and Riley Griffin report. Zuckerberg is building the new AI team in tandem with a reported investment of over $10B in Scale AI, sources say, adding that Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang was expected to join the AGI group after a deal is done. Zuckerberg aims to hire around 50 people for the new team, including a new head of AI research.

CLOUD DEAL: Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI plans to add Google’s (GOOGL) cloud service to meet its growing needs for computing capacity, Reuters’ Kenrick Cai and Krystal Hu report, citing three sources. The deal, which has been under discussion for a few months, was finalized in May, one of the sources says. Google’s cloud unit will supply additional computing capacity to OpenAI’s existing infrastructure for training and running its AI models, the sources say.

SUBSCRIPTION REVENUE: Microsoft-partnered OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue has nearly doubled to $10B as demand surges for its AI tool ChatGPT, George Hammond of The Financial Times reports. The company said its measure of expected revenue from subscriptions had soared from the $5.5B it hit at the end of last year. The growth in recurring revenue suggests AI tools are beginning to justify the hype that surrounded them over the past few years, but many are still lossmaking.

APPLE INTELLIGENCE: Apple (AAPL) announced new Apple Intelligence features that “elevate the user experience” across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. “Apple Intelligence unlocks new ways for users to communicate with features like Live Translation; do more with what’s on their screen with updates to visual intelligence; and express themselves with enhancements to Image Playground and Genmoji. Additionally, Shortcuts can now tap into Apple Intelligence directly, and developers will be able to access the on-device large language model at the core of Apple Intelligence, giving them direct access to intelligence that is powerful, fast, built with privacy, and available even when users are offline. These Apple Intelligence features are available for testing starting today, and will be available to users with supported devices set to a supported language this fall,” the company stated.

Morgan Stanley says Apple’s WWDC 2025 kickoff was heavy on design, user interface, and platform unification upgrades, alongside “a sprinkling of AI upgrades,” but few major AI feature enhancements. While the firm believes sentiment is unlikely to shift until more tangible AI progress is evident, it contends that Apple “clearly still has the ingredients to make it an AI winner.” Morgan Stanley keeps an Overweight rating and $235 price target on Apple shares.

Wedbush reiterated an Outperform rating and $270 price target on Apple after the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote presentation. Overall, WWDC laid out the vision for developers, but was void of any major Apple Intelligence progress as the company is playing it safe and close to the vest after the missteps last year, the firm tells investors in a research note. Wedbush added that while it understands the strategy, this is a “big year ahead” for Apple to monetize on the AI front as ultimately management may be forced into doing some bigger AI acquisitions to jumpstart this AI strategy. Despite being “late to the party,” Apple has started to lay out the foundation of its multi-year AI strategy over the coming years, the firm says, adding that the firm believes this event has planted the initial seeds for Apple’s AI strategy into 2026 and beyond.