Lokesh Pitches Scale AI, Meta Partnerships for Vizag at Davos

Vijayawada:Education and IT minister N. Lokesh held high-level meetings with global technology leaders, pitching Visakhapatnam as a hub for advanced artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure.

In a meeting with Trevor Thompson, Global managing director of Scale AI, the minister sought the company’s partnership to establish a Scale AI Centre of Excellence in Visakhapatnam.

Lokesh proposed collaboration to set up an AI Safety, Evaluation and Governance Lab at the Ratan Tata Innovation Hub, with a focus on large language model (LLM) benchmarking, red-teaming and AI governance for public datasets and government applications.

Lokesh also urged Scale AI to extend its SEAL platform to support applied AI delivery, advanced talent development and academic collaboration in AP. Stressing the need to future-proof AP’s workforce, he sought support to promote AI literacy and build strong talent pipelines in geospatial AI and computer vision.

Responding to the proposals, Thompson said Scale AI’s mission was to develop trustworthy AI systems for some of the world’s most critical decision-making needs. The company focused on AI data infrastructure, model evaluation and applied AI software, serving governments and enterprises globally.

He assured Lokesh that Scale AI would examine the AP proposals in detail.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Scale AI is valued at about $29 billion and provides services to the US Department of Defense, the US Army and other federal agencies. Its client base includes leading technology companies such as Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Nvidia, apart from Fortune 500 firms across automotive, logistics, technology and financial services.

Lokesh also met Kelvin Martin, vice-president and global policy head of Meta. The minister invited Meta to support the development of scalable data centre capacity in Visakhapatnam, aligned with the company’s global infrastructure requirements and AP’s digital ecosystem.

The IT minister further proposed a partnership with RTIH to establish a Centre of Excellence for Reality Labs, aimed at mentoring startups working on immersive technologies, AI and next-generation digital products.

Lokesh also sought deeper collaboration on WhatsApp-based digital governance, including citizen services, grievance redressal mechanisms and official State communications.

Martin said Meta would discuss the proposals with its senior leadership team and convey its decision after internal consultations.