Meta’s $14 Billion Message: The Undervalued Power Of Open Talent

When Meta invested nearly $15 billion in Scale AI, most headlines framed it as a bold play in artificial intelligence. I saw something else: a long-overdue revaluation of open talent.

In mid-2025, Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI, valuing the data-labeling startup just shy of $30 billion. This wasn’t about acquiring cutting-edge IP or next-gen infrastructure. It was a purchase of capacity, of access. What Meta really bought was the ability to flex.

Scale AI, at its core, is a freelance platform. Its strength lies in mobilizing tens of thousands of distributed workers to label, fine-tune, and validate the data that fuels large language models (LLMs). These aren’t full-time employees. They’re on-demand contributors, logging in, doing the work, and logging off. But they’re vital to AI’s evolution, and to Meta’s ability to compete in this new era.

Meta didn’t just invest in AI. It invested in a new model of work. And in doing so, it may have finally signaled to the business world what some of us have long argued: open talent platforms are not a workaround, they’re a foundation.

Beneath the buzzwords and billion-dollar valuations, Scale AI’s operating model looks far more like or Torc than it does OpenAI or Anthropic. Its value proposition is flexibility, speed, and global reach, offering what would traditionally be fixed labor as a dynamic, variable resource.

Yet many executives still see open talent as a side play, great for design work or overflow tasks, but not strategic. Meta’s move challenges that mindset. It points to something deeper: the shift from owning talent to orchestrating it.

As explored in a recent SIA report on workforce transformation, the most forward-looking companies are already rethinking how they access and engage skills. Instead of recruiting reactively, they’re building ecosystems where pre-vetted, mission-ready talent can be deployed at a moment’s notice.

In uncertain times, like now, companies naturally turn to cost-cutting and restructuring. But few examine the fixed nature of their labor costs. That’s a missed opportunity.

Shifting to variable labor models isn’t just a cost strategy; it’s a competitive one. Platforms like Torc, now integrated into Randstad Digital, show how open talent can enable rapid scaling, skill precision, and financial agility. According to the SIA report, some firms reduced interview time from a week to an hour and found “needle-in-a-haystack” talent nearly instantly.