Alexandr Wang

Alexandr Wang is the CEO and founder of Scale AI, a company accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) app development through better data. When Scale AI was valued at $7.3 billion in 2021, Wang became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at twenty-four years of age. Wang is known for his views on AI and the need for America to become the global leader in AI for its national security. Wang was named in Time's 2023 list of the 100 most influential people in AI.

Alexandr Wang was born in 1997 in New Mexico. His parents emigrated to the US from China and worked at Los Alamos Laboratory as physicists on projects for the US Air Force and the military. He attended Los Alamos High School, excelling in math, coding, and physics. He competed in the USA Computing Olympiad, USA Mathematical Talent Search (placing fifth nationally), and Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program, and he was selected for the USA Physics Team (top 20 physics students in the nation).

In 2014, at age seventeen, Wang moved to San Francisco to work for Quora. Wang attended MIT for one year before dropping out and joining start-up accelerator Y Combinator and starting Scale AI with Luy Guo in 2016.

Scale AI helps companies accelerate AI app development by improving data using a combination of software and human workers to label and tag text, image, and video data. Scale received a $4.5 million investment in 2016, and within months, Wang and Guo realized the company was a viable solution for reviewing and labeling driving footage. In 2018, Scale's client list grew to include Toyota, Honda, and Waymo (Google Subsidiary). The company had several rounds of funding, including a 2021 round that valued the company at over $7 billion, making Wang the youngest self-made billionaire at twenty-four. As of 2023, Scale works with over 300 companies, including Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Scale also has contracts with the US Department of Defense worth tens of millions of dollars.

Scale has been criticized for relying on cheap overseas labor and outsourcing data-labeling work to over 200,000 people in countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Reports have stated Scale pays these workers less than $1 an hour. Scale has stated its economists conduct quarterly pay analyses “to ensure fair and competitive compensation.”

In 2018, Wang visited China, touring a facial recognition technology during his trip. Wang has stated that during his visit, he saw early signs of a technology cold war between China and the USA. Since 2018, Wang has become known for voicing his concerns about China's AI ambitions, cultivating connections with US officials who share this opinion. Wang believes America’s national security is tied to its ability to become the global leader in AI. Wang views the AI race as a competition between democratic values and authoritarianism. He has privately briefed lawmakers on the subject and appeared at hearings on Capitol Hill.