NEW YORK (Fortune) — Ride-hailing giant Uber is expanding its business into data labeling services, offering platforms and tools to companies building custom AI models, a move reported to unsettle clients of recently acquired firm Scale AI.
Speaking with Fortune, Uber executive Megha Yethadka stated the company is broadening its AI portfolio. Uber AI announced the expansion of its data platform, providing “customized data solutions for building smarter AI models and agents,” the executive added.
“For Uber, our core has always been being the platform of choice for flexible on-demand work,” Yethadka noted. “That extends itself really well to this business of digital tasks now.”
Uber first launched its data labeling platform last year. Data labeling involves assigning tags or annotations to raw data like images, text, or audio, a critical step for training machine learning models and enhancing AI understanding.
The venture comes just weeks after social media giant Meta paid $14.8 billion for AI data company Scale AI Inc. Industry analysts suggest the deal significantly strengthens Meta’s position in the AI race but also raises concerns among other technology heavyweights. Bloomberg previously reported OpenAI was phasing out Scale’s data services following news of the acquisition.
According to industry projections, the data labeling market could reach $17 billion by 2030.
Big Tech companies are actively investing in artificial intelligence infrastructure and applications as they vie to dominate a transformative industry. Analysts suggest the potential emergence of Artificial General Intelligence may be only a few years away, driving this increased investment.