For a brief period at the start of this year, it looked like venture capitalists’ hunger for artificial intelligence startups was ebbing, spooked by lofty prices and increasing competition from big companies like Google. But in recent weeks, investors have shown the kind of unbridled enthusiasm that colored much of last year—and startups are looking to capitalize.
Scale AI, which labels images or text to teach AI models to recognize patterns, has been talking to investors about raising more money, according to people familiar with the talks. CEO Alexandr Wang last year privately said he wanted to raise funding at a valuation of as much as $14 billion, or roughly twice the valuation Scale received in a funding round three years ago, said one person with knowledge of the comment.