Alexandr Wang: how the world's youngest self-made billionaire is shaping AI

When the Silicon Valley company When the San-Francisco tech start-up Scale AI was valued at $7.3 billion in 2021, its co-founder and chief executive Alexandr Wang became "the world's youngest self-made billionaire" at just 24.

It was a brief tenure, said Forbes, with Wang "quickly falling from the billionaire ranks as the valuations of private tech companies plummeted over the next year".

However, earlier this year the now 27-year-old Wang "regained the title" after announcing that Scale AI, "his artificial intelligence unicorn", had secured a large capital infusion, giving Wang – who owns around 14% of the company – an estimated worth of $2 billion (£1.5 billion)". But who is Alexandr Wang, and what makes his AI start-up so special? 

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Who is Alexandr Wang?

Wang's "privileged upbringing" was crucial in giving him "a solid foundation in science and technology", said Mashable. Born in New Mexico, his Chinese immigrant parents "both worked as physicists on projects for the US Air Force and the military" and the future tech CEO "clearly had a brilliant mind passed down from his parents". He was "a maths whiz" as a child and "fond of participating in coding competitions", said ZeeBiz.

Wang "spent just one year at MIT" studying mathematics and computer science before teaming up with Lucy Guo, "another dropout", to start Scale in 2016, according to Forbes. Several rounds of investment followed, culminating in 2021 when the company was valued "north of $7 billion". It had taken Wang "just five years to become the youngest self-made billionaire in the world".

What is Scale AI?

"Behind even the most impressive AI system are people," said The Verge, and any AI company trying to be competitive requires "huge numbers of people labelling data to train it and clarifying data when it gets confused". These vast quantities of annotated data can then, in turn, be sold to firms like OpenAI to train their algorithms.

An army of 240,000 outsourced workers around the world are employed by Scale's data annotation subsidiary Remotasks, which Wang describes as "very, very important to the process of building powerful AI systems".

"Within months" of going into business, Wang and Guo "realised Scale was a viable solution" to a problem affecting self-driving car companies, which were at "AI's then-frontier", said Forbes. These companies had "millions of miles" of driving footage but "not nearly enough people to review and label it". Scale "could fill that need". By 2018, Scale's client list included "major international auto manufacturers" such as Toyota and Honda.

Over the past eight years, Wang "has proven himself a crafty opportunist", said Cory Weinberg on The Information, "shifting Scale toward fresh pools of revenue when old ones dried up". "So successful and valuable is Scale's technology," said Saul Lipchik in the South China Morning Post's Style magazine, its service has been "employed by more than 300 companies", including Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia.

Why is Wang so influential?

Wang "has cemented himself in the upper echelons of Silicon Valley, partly through his knack for getting into the right rooms and securing the high-powered connections that can propel a young founder's fortunes", Weinberg wrote. "Partly thanks to Scale's deals with OpenAI, revenue is booming," putting the start-up in "the top ranks of generative AI companies by sales".

Wang's influence extends beyond California, too. Scale provides services to the US government, and Wang's "deep connections in Washington" make him "stand out in the California-centric tech industry", said Louise Matsakis in the Semafor Technology newsletter. One lawmaker even called Wang a "real friend" – which is "a real compliment in DC".

Wang often speaks to legislators about his "hawkish views" on China, which he describes as "the greatest geopolitical competitor" to the US. He's twice briefed the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, with Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi praising him as "very insightful and at the same time personable".

Although OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman is the industry figure who "has been dominating the spotlight", Wang is "increasingly influencing how the industry is perceived" by regulators, said Matsakis. Scale AI's "outsized presence" in Washington may also "open lawmakers' eyes to the immense amount" of human labour that goes into AI.