Scale AI has appointed Francis deSouza as its new chief executive, bringing in a veteran of Google Cloud and Illumina to helm the AI data infrastructure company through what its founder described as a critical moment in the industry.
deSouza, who takes over August 10, previously served as chief operating officer and president of security products at Google Cloud during a period of rapid expansion. Before that he led Illumina as CEO, growing the genomics company’s revenue past $4.5 billion and expanding its platform across 150 countries.
Scale founder Alexandr Wang said deSouza’s experience running complex data-driven businesses at enterprise scale aligned with Scale’s dual focus on providing training data for frontier AI models and building applications on top of them. Scale has added BP and Mayo Clinic as customers alongside expanded government contracts.
Interim CEO Jason Droege, who led Scale since June 2025, will work with deSouza through the transition period.
