Scale AI picks up Trump’s chief technology officer Kratsios

Scale AI picks up Trump’s chief technology officer Kratsios

New York, 6/4/2021

AI training data provider Scale AI has hired former U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios as managing director and head of strategy. Kratsios served as the country’s chief technology officer under former President Trump from Aug. 2019 to Jan. 2021.

The San Francisco startup helps companies curate and tag their data for AI training and applications. Since launching in 2016, the data labeling startup has become more of an AI application infrastructure provider. It helps customers like Lyft, Airbnb, Nvidia and Toyota train AI systems to analyze documents or recognize objects, for example.

Kratsios will help his clients, which include PayPal and the Toyota Research Institute, move their AI pilots into production. The former CTO said he wants to expand his customer base to include more traditional businesses and Fortune 500 companies in areas such as financial services and agriculture.

As of April, Scale AI had a market valuation of more than $7.3 billion – an increase of nearly 110% since its $3.5 billion valuation in December. To date, the company has raised $602 million in venture capital.