SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Alphabet’s Google, the largest customer of Scale AI, plans to cut ties with Scale after news broke that rival Meta is taking a 49% stake in the AI data-labeling startup, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Google had planned to pay Scale AI about $200 million this year for the human-labeled training data that is crucial for developing technology, including the sophisticated AI models that power Gemini, its ChatGPT competitor, one of the sources said. The search giant already held conversations with several of Scale AI’s rivals this week as it seeks to shift away much of that workload, sources added.