Jason Droege

Key Takeaways:
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2025 was Scale&rsquo;s strongest financial year ever, ending the year with well over $1B in new business, with nearly half of all new bookings coming in Q4 alone.&nbsp;
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Enterprise closed its strongest bookings quarter ever in Q4, adding customers including Mayo Clinic, BP, and Allianz. The applications business continues to grow and we expect it to double this year.
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Our U.S. Government business delivered its best quarter to date in Q3, securing multi-million-dollar awards, including two contracts in the nine figures.
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Our International Public Sector team doubled its revenue last year, continuing its growth beyond Europe into the Middle East, drastically expanding its footprint in Qatar and the UK, establishing its presence in Riyadh and Dubai, and driving impact across a range of sectors. We project our international business to double in 2026.
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SEAL emerged as a trusted industry authority for model benchmarking, introducing 15 new frontier leaderboards and publishing more than 450 evaluations across 50+ releases as labs rolled out new models.
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As 2026 ramps up, I wanted to share an update on Scale&rsquo;s progress over the past year and lay out where we&rsquo;re headed next.&nbsp;
The pace of change across the AI industry has been breakneck, and Scale has played an important role in moving it forward. Through it all, we remain focused on executing and delivering for our customers. That focus carried us through a year of remarkable change and allowed us to end it in our strongest financial position. In 2025, we delivered our biggest year of revenue ever, driven by over $1B in new business across both our data and applications businesses.&nbsp;
As AI moves beyond pilots, customers are more focused on reliability. They want systems that can be trusted to support the important work they do. That shift led us to update our mission in September: to develop reliable AI systems for the world&rsquo;s most important decisions. In service of that mission, we grew our global footprint, expanding across New York, London, Washington, D.C., Doha, and St. Louis, while continuing to invest in our team. Over the past year, we brought on more than 500 people to the team and ended 2025 with the highest offer acceptance rate in our history.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Looking ahead, we&rsquo;ll strengthen our technical foundation and accelerate in places where we&rsquo;re seeing the most momentum. Below is a snapshot of how our data and applications businesses performed in 2025, and how we&rsquo;re building on that progress in 2026.
<h3 dir="ltr">Building the Data Foundation for Reliable AI</h3>
Our data business helps the world&rsquo;s leading AI labs and technology companies train, test, and improve advanced models using high-quality, trusted data. In 2025, our data business saw strong year-over-year growth. Despite media reporting following the Meta deal, the business performed best in the second half of the year and is now profitable.
As AI expands beyond screens and into the physical world, we also grew our work supporting physical AI and robotics companies, delivering more than 150,000 hours of data and onboarding 10 new robotics customers.&nbsp;
Our Safety Evaluation and Alignment Lab (SEAL) evaluates how advanced models perform in real-world conditions, not just in controlled or theoretical settings. As new frontier models were released throughout 2025, SEAL became a trusted reference point for how those systems perform at launch. Last year, the SEAL team introduced 15 new benchmarks and published more than 450 evaluations across more than 50 models. Benchmarks such as <a href="https://scale.com/leaderboard/humanitys_last_exam">Humanity&rsquo;s Last Exam</a>, <a href="https://scale.com/research/swe_bench_pro">SWE-Bench Pro</a>, and <a href="https://scale.com/leaderboard/mcp_atlas">MCP Atlas</a> are now widely used by labs and developers to assess model capability, safety, and reliability at release. Together, this work gives the industry clearer signal on what new models can actually do and where they fall short.
<h3 dir="ltr">Bringing AI into Production</h3>
Our applications business helps make AI work across enterprises and governments, a challenge the broader industry is still working through as organizations expect bigger returns on their AI investments. In 2025, our applications business accelerated meaningfully, more than doubling revenue in the second half of the year. The applications business continues to meaningfully grow and we expect it to roughly double again this year.
Our Enterprise business closed its strongest bookings quarter ever in Q4, with new customers including Mayo Clinic, BP, and Allianz. Our Public Sector business continued delivering capabilities that support America's national defense. In 2025, the Department of War awarded Scale two major contracts totaling nearly $200M. We also continue to lead Project Thunderforge, the Pentagon&rsquo;s flagship effort to integrate AI agents into mission planning, with the help of Anduril and Microsoft.&nbsp;
Outside the U.S., our International Public Sector business has accelerated rapidly, with the Middle East emerging as our fastest-growing region. We are seeing a distinct shift where governments are moving past the experimental phase and selecting Scale to deliver full-stack, sovereign AI infrastructure. In Qatar, for example, we worked alongside the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to deploy AI applications for the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the Council of Ministers, and Qatar Museums in direct support of national priorities in education, governance, and the arts and culture. We've also forged important partnerships with Google Cloud, Microsoft, AWS, Inception, and Malomatia to power AI deployment across Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Driven by this demand for production-grade AI, we project our international business to double in 2026.
<h3 dir="ltr">Our Focus for 2026</h3>
We don&rsquo;t expect 2026 to be any easier than 2025. Change across AI is happening fast, and we&rsquo;re evolving just as quickly. That means training models in more realistic reinforcement learning environments and expanding our work in robotics and physical AI, where high-quality data is all that matters.
This year, we&rsquo;ll apply our model-training advantage by moving technical capabilities from our data business into applications faster. We&rsquo;re also investing heavily in our technology stack for enterprise and government customers, with a focus on building a more unified, AI-native foundation.
I&rsquo;m excited about what&rsquo;s ahead and confident in the momentum and team we&rsquo;re carrying into 2026.
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Scale CEO Jason Droege shares 2025 results and how Scale is scaling data, applications, and AI systems for 2026.

Scale CEO Jason Droege reflects on 2025 growth and outlines how Scale is building reliable, production-ready AI for 2026.

Scale’s Next Era: Building for 2026

Thank you for being such an important part of Scale.&nbsp;
It is an honor to step into the role of interim CEO at Scale during such a pivotal moment for our company and the broader AI landscape. I can&rsquo;t thank Alex enough for what he built and I&rsquo;m honored that he and the Board have chosen me to shepherd it into the future. I&rsquo;m incredibly energized by the conversations I've had this week, and I want to take this opportunity to share my vision and correct some misunderstandings.
Scale has always been at the forefront of innovation, and as we embark on the next stage of Scale we're not just continuing that legacy &ndash; we're accelerating it.
<h3 dir="ltr">The Meta Deal</h3>
Let's first talk about the news of the past week. I know there's been a lot of news reporting, but some of it has been incorrect or misunderstood. Unlike some other recent tech deals you might have heard about in the AI space, this is not a pivot or a winding down. Scale remains, unequivocally, an independent company.
This deal rewards many of the people who helped build Scale into what it is today, but more importantly to me, it's also a validation of the course we're on. Scale remains a well-resourced company, with multiple promising lines of business and a seasoned leadership team to help them grow. I've been pleasantly surprised by the inbound interest from technical and non-technical people in joining our team, and I hope to announce additional leaders soon.
And let me make one point absolutely clear: nothing has changed about our <a href="https://scale.com/blog/customer-trust-scale-meta-deal">commitment to protecting customer data</a>. Security, privacy, and customer trust have always been core to our business, and we will continue to ensure the right protections are in place to help safeguard all of our work with customers.&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr">Building an Agentic Future</h3>
To our customers: we&rsquo;re not slowing down. Our focus on data and applications remains unwavering, and we are building products in service of an agentic future. One where AI is aligned with human values, and it is used to improve our lives, our governments, and the services we use every day.
<h4 dir="ltr">Data: Our Enduring Foundation</h4>
Data is the foundation of our business today, and it will remain a critical component of our success going forward. We remain one of the only providers capable of serving customers at volume, a testament to our robust infrastructure and expertise.
The need for high-quality data for AI models remains significant, and with the largest network of experts training AI, we are set up well to help model builders keep pushing the frontier of what&rsquo;s possible.
We will also continue to be model-agnostic. When everyone in the industry learns and improves, the world improves. Our research teams will continue to publish cutting-edge research and develop unbiased leaderboards that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of every model.
Of course what fueled our growth in the past, won&rsquo;t be enough to fuel our growth in the future. That&rsquo;s why we are continuing to evolve and expand.
We are a diversified business. We are more than just data labeling. But I get it &ndash; labels stick.
<h4 dir="ltr">Applications: The Limitless Horizon</h4>
Over the past several years, long before this deal, we were already building out our applications business units. These units span across governments and enterprises, and are focused on building AI applications for our customers that protect Americans, personalize education, improve healthcare, speed up drug discovery, and make customer service better.
We already work with numerous global businesses, the U.S. Government, and governments abroad, but we are going to double down on building applications because that is where we see the future, and that is where we can best service an ever-growing roster of customers.
And as we move towards an agentic future, where AI is embedded in almost everything we do, Scale will continue to be the company that ensures AI retains a human touch. Internally, we often talk about the need to strengthen human sovereignty &ndash; the concept that humans must retain control over AI and that AI stays aligned with our values. As a company built around the human aspect of AI, that call to action will remain central to Scale.
I'm incredibly optimistic about our future. We have an exceptional team, a clear vision, and the resources to achieve truly remarkable things. In the coming months, we&rsquo;ll be sharing some exciting announcements that will further illustrate how we are better positioned for success than ever before.
Thank you for your continued dedication and belief in Scale.
Sincerely,
Jason Droege, Interim CEO, Scale

Scale remains independent and focused on building trusted AI applications.

A Message from Scale’s Interim CEO, Jason Droege

To Our Valued Customers, Dedicated Employees and Supportive Investors

Today, TIME is introducing a generative AI experience for their Person of the Year, as well as Persons of the Year for 2022, 2023 and 2024. This interactive platform will redefine how readers engage with journalism, offering an entirely new way to experience TIME&rsquo;s vast archive and dynamic storytelling. This interactive platform was built through a strategic partnership with Scale AI, in which we brought together TIME&rsquo;s proprietary data, the base LLM model's latent knowledge, data about relevant current events and custom guardrails to keep the model on-topic and also safe for use.&nbsp;
Through this partnership, TIME readers will be able to translate TIME's content into five languages&mdash;English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese,&nbsp; transform Person of the Year content into personalized audio summaries of any length, and engage in real-time dialogue with a chatbot about the content.
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For example, readers will be able to ask&nbsp; TIME AI questions like: &ldquo;Why was X chosen as TIME Person of the year" or &ldquo;What was Taylor Swift&rsquo;s most streamed song in 2024&rdquo;, or &ldquo;What is Neuralink&rdquo;. They can also catch up on past editions by listening to articles in podcast format while multitasking, or receive concise summaries focused on the subjects within the content that matter most to them.&nbsp;
To tune the TIME AI guardrails, we used in house red-teaming to establish safety standards and enforce them. 7,000 attack vectors were tested to protect against AI misuse and custom tailored attacks. Red-teaming is essential in the AI development lifecycle, serving as a safeguard to proactively identify vulnerabilities, biases, and harmful behaviors that could arise under unexpected conditions. By constantly iterating and refining the model&rsquo;s responses through these techniques, we ensure that the model is resilient against a wide spectrum of adversarial inputs as well as tailored to reflect TIME&rsquo;s editorial voice.&nbsp;
TIME AI is also powered by other strategic partners including OpenAI, which provides the conversational chat functionality, and ElevenLabs, which underpins the audio components.&nbsp;
This partnership exemplifies our commitment to pushing the boundaries of what AI can do for enterprises. AI can be used not just to enhance user experience, but also to address critical model limitations and align model capabilities with unique business objectives. Also, through red-teaming, we&rsquo;ve helped to make the model safer, ensuring that risks are minimized.&nbsp;
Together with TIME, we are pioneering a future where media is not just consumed, but experienced&mdash;where Generative AI amplifies engagement, broadens accessibility, and fosters deeper connections between audiences and the content they consume. The potential for AI to reshape how we engage with news, stories, and history is vast, and we are thrilled to be at the forefront of this transformation.

Today, TIME is introducing a generative AI experience for their Person of the Year.

Scale AI & TIME Unveil a GenAI Experience

Scale AI and TIME Unveil a Generative AI Experience for Person of the Year

When people ask why I joined Scale, I tell them it&rsquo;s about the opportunity to be a part of the most fundamental change happening in technology in my lifetime. I&rsquo;ve been lucky enough to start companies and live through the phases of the internet back to the days of dial up and this is the most significant shift yet.
Previously at Uber Eats and AXON we built technology that improves everyday life. Both impactful in very different ways. At Scale the opportunity is to be impactful across every interaction people have with AI which will touch every aspect of our personal and professional lives. That depth and breadth of potential impact is extremely compelling.
Specifically, Scale tackles one of the hardest challenges in AI: improving models through data. Doing this requires incredible talent, sophisticated operations *and* strong vision for where AI is going. It&rsquo;s remarkable what the team has accomplished so far and, yet, we&rsquo;re still at the very beginning! I learned at Uber that the magic is in the details and that&rsquo;s something Scale takes very seriously.
<h3 dir="ltr">The Allure of Scale</h3>
The culture at Scale is not just about aligning with the company&rsquo;s core credos but about thriving in an environment where innovation is at its core. Scale&rsquo;s commitment to solving complex problems and pushing the boundaries of what&rsquo;s possible in AI was evident from my very first conversation with the team.
What really resonated with me was the deep dedication to finding the right solutions, regardless of the challenge&rsquo;s complexity. Scale is not just another tech startup, it's a place that constantly thinks from first principles about what is right and necessary.
The team&rsquo;s enthusiasm and dedication to advancing the field of AI, especially through generative AI, were incredibly inspiring. This is what makes Scale stand out as a company: it doesn&rsquo;t just adapt to change but actively drives it.
<h3 dir="ltr">The Impact of AI&nbsp;</h3>
Scale&rsquo;s mission to accelerate AI development by solving the key bottleneck of data scarcity and quality struck a chord with me, given that the company has been at the forefront of AI data for 8 years, fueling major advancements in areas like autonomous vehicles, defense, and generative AI. Their mission to enhance AI data quality has the power to influence every industry.
<h3 dir="ltr">Growth in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape</h3>
At Scale, the stakes are high but that&rsquo;s how we like it.
If you like big problems and high standards, you should probably be here.&nbsp;
The opportunity to contribute to a company that stands at the forefront of AI and data technology is exhilarating. At Scale, I see the chance to not only drive innovation but also to be part of a mission that is fundamentally transforming how businesses operate and how AI interacts with the world. This mission is not just about incremental improvements but about making groundbreaking strides that can redefine entire industries.
If you&rsquo;re inspired by what you&rsquo;ve read and believe Scale could be the right fit for you, I invite you to apply to join us on this exciting journey.&nbsp;

Jason Droege is joining Scale as Chief Strategy Officer and explains why he joined. 

Jason Droege

Scale’s Next Era: Building for 2026

To Our Valued Customers, Dedicated Employees and Supportive Investors

Scale AI and TIME Unveil a Generative AI Experience for Person of the Year

Why I Joined Scale: Jason Droege