Scale AI was the dominant AI training data company through 2023. In 2024, Scale's contractor-facing brand consolidated under Outlier. Many contractors are still confused about what's where in 2026. Here's the clean update.
What happened
Scale AI continues to operate as a B2B company selling training data to frontier labs. The contractor-facing labeling work that used to run under "Scale.com/scale" or "Remotasks" got brought under the Outlier brand for unified contractor experience.
So in 2026:
- Outlier = Scale's contractor-facing brand for text and code AI training.
- Remotasks = Scale's contractor-facing brand for visual and multimodal work (still active under the Outlier umbrella).
- Scale AI = the parent B2B company. Contractors don't apply here directly.
What this means for former Scale contractors
If you worked Scale-branded labeling in 2023:
- Your account most likely migrated to Outlier automatically.
- Your quality history and tier carried over.
- Your payment setup needed re-confirmation but no major changes.
If you didn't migrate, your old Scale account is dormant and not reactivable. The path forward is applying fresh to Outlier.
What Outlier inherited from Scale
- Larger task pool: Outlier became the largest single AI training task pool in 2024 after merging Scale's contracts.
- Frontier-lab partnerships: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta all have Outlier-routed work.
- Quality scoring infrastructure: Scale's quality system became Outlier's tier system.
- Payment infrastructure: Stripe Connect + Wise integration carried over.
What stayed under Scale's B2B brand
Scale AI's B2B work continues unchanged:
- Enterprise contracts with frontier labs (training data delivery).
- Government / defense contracts (DOD AI training data).
- Custom data pipelines for non-AI-lab clients.
None of this is contractor-facing. If you want to work for Scale AI as a full-time engineer, that's a normal job application — not a contractor sign-up.
Should former Scale contractors trust the new structure?
Yes, with caveats. Outlier inherited Scale's quality systems and frontier-lab relationships. Pay is competitive. The contractor experience is more polished than Scale's was in 2022–2023.
The caveat: tier resets happened during the merger. Some former Scale senior contractors found themselves at Outlier mid-tier post-merger and had to re-earn senior status. This is mostly resolved by 2026 but worth knowing.
Where to apply in 2026 if you used to work Scale
- Outlier (outlier.ai) — for text and code AI training work.
- Remotasks (via Outlier umbrella) — for image, video, lidar, and 3D annotation work.
- Mercor — for higher-rate specialty work, especially senior coding and domain RLHF.
Bottom line
Scale AI's contractor-facing brand is now Outlier. The merger preserved infrastructure, quality systems, and frontier-lab partnerships. Former Scale contractors with active accounts migrated automatically; those without active accounts apply fresh to Outlier. Scale's B2B work continues separately and isn't contractor-facing.