Jason Droege, then a vice president at Uber, speaks at the WSJTECH live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on October 22, 2019. Droege is now leading the AI startup Scale after a leadership shakeup following Meta's $14 billion investment in June. Mike Blake/Reuters New York —

The artificial intelligence industry has a big problem: 95% of companies that try AI aren’t making any money from it, according to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last month. One AI executive believes he knows why.

“There has been this general promise of, hey, you’ll just plug in the (AI) model … and everything will work,” Jason Droege, CEO of startup Scale AI, said in an interview. “The reality is a little bit different.”

Scale is primarily known for helping to make AI work at

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