Updated November 2026
micro1 vs Scale AI: which should license your company's data?
If you want to read the deal before you talk to anyone, micro1 is the easier one to check, because its terms are public: a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable license, and $100K-$2M+ per deal by its own numbers. Scale AI gives $10K-$1M+ as an illustrative value and says partnerships can start small, but publishes no license terms, payment timing or finished deals. Meta holds 49% of Scale.1,2,3,4,5
Side by side
micro1 and Scale AI, row by row
| Topic | micro1 | Scale AI |
|---|---|---|
| What it takes | Internal docs, SOPs and playbooks, knowledge bases, project workflows, internal comms, templates, CRM and task histories6 | Data warehouses, chat, email and calendar, documents, work tools such as Jira and Notion, and platforms such as Salesforce and SAP7 |
| Who qualifies | 30+ employees, US first, mostly English data8 | 40+ employees as a preferred start, assessed case by case9 |
| Stated price | $100K-$2M+ per deal2 | $10K-$1M+, labeled illustrative3 |
| One deal or repeat | A license per dataset; its ads mention "opportunities to become recurring"2,10 | Designed for recurring revenue, and can start with very limited scope3 |
| When you get paid | Invoice after it accepts the data; it has 30 business days after delivery to reject it11 | Not published4 |
| License terms | Nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and passable to others; you keep ownership1,12 | Not published4 |
| Names and personal details | Removed "when relevant", with a sample review before release13,14 | Stripped inside your own systems before anything leaves, with approval per package15 |
| Who stands behind it | $4B valuation, with a $1B commitment to buy company data16,17 | Meta holds 49%, reported to carry no voting rights; Scale says it stays independent5,18 |
The real gap
One buyer shows you its contract terms and the other shows you a process
micro1's public terms tell you what you are signing up for: the license never ends, it can be passed on to others, and your data is deleted within 120 days of final delivery, though models already trained on it stay. You may not love all of that, but you can weigh it before the first call.1
Scale AI's page is stronger on how the work gets done. It says names are stripped inside your own environment before extraction, nothing is shared without your approval of each package, and on-prem and private cloud setups are possible. What it leaves out is the deal itself, so license length, exclusivity, retention and payment timing are all questions for your first call.15,4
One line on Scale's page is worth reading twice. It says employee and customer identities never leave, and it also says chat keeps participants intact, email keeps senders and recipients, and files keep authorship. Ask whether those fields are swapped for tokens before you approve a package, and put the same question to micro1 about what "when relevant" covers.19,13
Choosing
Which fits which company
A company of 30 to 39 people clears micro1's stated floor and sits under Scale's preferred start. If your best records are a warehouse of structured data, or you want a small first deal that repeats, Scale's page speaks to that more directly. If your know-how lives in playbooks and process documents, micro1's list is closer.8,9,3,6
If you compete with Meta, or sell to someone who does, put the ownership question to Scale directly, even though the stake is reported to carry no voting rights. Its FAQ says AI companies will not use your data to compete, but it names no buyers and does not mention Meta.5,20
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
Scale calls 40+ its preferred starting point and assesses each company, so smaller is possible. It also looks for years of records, real workflows, deep know-how in your field and a clear internal owner.9
You can, but order may matter. micro1's license is nonexclusive, though its terms have you promise you have not already licensed the same data to someone else on similar terms, and Scale does not publish whether its deals are exclusive. Before you sign either, ask whether it stops you licensing the same data elsewhere.1,4
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Questions to talk through with your buyer
Every business is different, so these are best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over them with you before anything is signed.
Questions for this kind of business
- Which of our customer and supplier agreements limit what we can license, and to whom?
- Do customer, supplier or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?