From Scale AI to Meta's AI boss: Who is Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old MIT dropout gunning for OpenAI?

Economic Times

16 hours ago

Meta Platforms is investing $15 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, a data-labelling startup now valued at $29 billion. The deal, confirmed by both companies on Thursday, marks a strategic shift for Meta as it races to reclaim its edge in artificial intelligence.
The main draw? Alexandr Wang.
The 28-year-old MIT dropout and CEO of Scale AI will join Meta to lead its newly-formed superintelligence team. This unit is tasked with building systems that push beyond today's artificial intelligence capabilities—towards artificial superintelligence (ASI).'We will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,' Meta said in a statement, as reported by Reuters.Though Meta will not take a seat on Scale AI's board, the deal will see a few of Scale's 1,500 employees join Wang at Meta. Wang will remain a board member at Scale.
Wang's background is far from typical. Born in Los Alamos, New Mexico to Chinese immigrant physicists, he entered the tech world early. He worked at Quora before dropping out of MIT after his freshman year. In 2016, alongside Lucy Guo, he co-founded Scale AI via startup accelerator Y Combinator.'Long-term, we want to power any human-powered process for any company,' Wang told the YC blog in 2016.At just 24, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Though Guo exited the startup a few years later, Wang built Scale AI into a data backbone for many of the world's leading AI systems.He's raised over $680 million, including $100 million from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Today, Forbes estimates his personal net worth at $3.6 billion.'Focus on building the business and then the rest will kind of take care of itself,' he told Business Insider in 2020.
Wang has become a familiar face in Washington, frequently engaging with lawmakers on the national security implications of AI. In 2018, a visit to China convinced him that America's future in warfare would hinge on AI leadership. 'The race for AI global leadership is well underway, and our nation's ability to efficiently adopt and implement AI will define the future of warfare,' Wang said in public testimony.Founded in 2016, Scale AI helps train frontier AI models by offering large volumes of labelled data. Its platforms—Remotasks and Outlier—enlist gig workers to annotate massive datasets. This labelled data is critical for training AI systems like ChatGPT.
The company began by serving autonomous vehicle clients such as Toyota, Honda, and Waymo. It has since expanded to support OpenAI, Microsoft, and even the US government, which uses its services to analyse satellite imagery from Ukraine. Scale's revenues in 2024 hit $870 million and are projected to more than double to $2 billion in 2025. Bloomberg reports this would push its valuation to $25 billion.Yet the startup's rapid ascent hasn't been without controversy. Investigations have highlighted harsh working conditions for its offshore gig workforce, who are paid as little as $1 per hour. These workers are primarily based in countries such as Kenya, the Philippines, and India.This isn't just an investment—it's a statement. With this deal, Meta is signalling a departure from the traditional research-led approach it once championed.Internal challenges, including high-profile exits and delayed model releases, have weighed on Meta's AI progress. The company's LLaMA open-source models were meant to disrupt the industry, but lukewarm adoption and team churn have slowed momentum.Meta's long-time AI chief, Yann LeCun, remains a key figure. Yet his scepticism about large language models (LLMs) as a path to artificial general intelligence (AGI) has reportedly diverged from mainstream Silicon Valley thinking.By bringing in Wang—who built Scale into a billion-dollar business without a research pedigree—CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now betting on a different kind of leadership. A business mind like Sam Altman's, rather than a research purist.Meta is reportedly luring talent from OpenAI and Google with seven to nine-figure pay packages to staff its 50-person superintelligence lab.'This was a deeply unique moment': Wang steps into new roleIn a message to employees, Wang acknowledged the emotional weight of leaving Scale.'The idea of not being a Scalien was, frankly, unimaginable. But as I spent time truly considering it, I realized this was a deeply unique moment, not just for me, but for Scale as well,' he wrote.He assured Scale's staff that proceeds from Meta's investment would go to shareholders and vested equity holders.At Meta, Wang will lead an ambitious mission: to build AI that not only catches up to its rivals but moves beyond them. Superintelligence remains a theoretical concept—but with Wang at the helm, Meta is making a $15 billion wager that it can become reality.