Ben Scharfstein, Head of Product for Enterprise Applications at Scale AI, describes Scale AI's core business units beyond its well-known data labeling operation.
“The other half of our business is the application business”
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More from Ben Scharfstein
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Ben Scharfstein predicts AI agents will drive software writing costs to zero
“One of the things that we really believe is the cost of writing software is going to zero in that world.”
Ben ScharfsteinAug 26, 2025▶ 8:53How Scale AI is Pioneering the Future of Work
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Ben Scharfstein estimates enterprise AI solutions are 70 percent unglamorous integration work
“What does the end-to-end solution look like? Which only 30% of it might involve AI, and the rest is that schlep that you just have to do to have an impact.”
Ben ScharfsteinAug 26, 2025▶ 20:15How Scale AI is Pioneering the Future of Work
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Ben Scharfstein predicts AI agents will replace systems integrators within a decade
“It's hard for me to think that in 10 years, there's going to be a super robust systems integrator ecosystem. Probably agents will just do it.”
Ben ScharfsteinAug 26, 2025▶ 29:40How Scale AI is Pioneering the Future of Work
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Ben Scharfstein says AI foundation model labs operate like movie studios
“I think that the, I would say my hottest take is, I think the right way to think about foundation labs is that they're like movie studios. And what I mean by that is they invest a ton of money in blockbusters that have a relatively short time spend to pay them…”
Ben ScharfsteinAug 26, 2025▶ 45:01How Scale AI is Pioneering the Future of Work
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Ben Scharfstein says top enterprises reject off-the-shelf vertical AI products
“And for those companies, they actually don't want the average of their peers. They don't want, you know, the thing that everyone else is getting, what's in distribution for the models. They don't want what's been productized for everyone else because they have…”
Ben ScharfsteinAug 26, 2025▶ 5:39How Scale AI is Pioneering the Future of Work
Insight
Ben Scharfstein argues that software code itself is not a defensible moat
“Interestingly, software was never a moat. It was never something that at least, you know, he thought was leading to differentiated returns. I think that's still true, which is that You know, the software itself is not emote.”
Ben ScharfsteinAug 26, 2025▶ 12:45How Scale AI is Pioneering the Future of Work
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