Meet Alexandr Wang, the Young CEO Meta is betting billions on to power its AI dreams

Meta

Meta is making a bold move to catch up in the AI race, and at the heart of that strategy is a 27-year-old tech prodigy—Alexandr Wang. The co-founder and CEO of Scale AI, Wang has quietly built one of the most influential companies in the AI world. Now, Meta is reportedly bringing him and his team onboard in a deal worth up to $15 billion to turbocharge its AI ambitions.

Scale AI is no ordinary startup. It began by helping autonomous vehicle companies label massive amounts of data so self-driving systems could recognize streets, signs, and obstacles. Today, it plays a key role in training large language models (LLMs) and powers AI for giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google’s Waymo.

Meta’s investment is more than just financial—it’s strategic. With CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushing AI across all products, from smart glasses to Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta wants to lead the charge toward artificial superintelligence (ASI), a form of AI that could outthink humans. But to do that, it needs talent. And that’s where Wang comes in.

Wang, the son of Chinese physicists, dropped out of MIT after a year and joined Y Combinator with Lucy Guo to launch Scale AI in 2016. At just 24, he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Now, Meta hopes his track record and data-centric approach to AI will give them the edge they’ve been missing.

The new AI lab at Meta, reportedly offering jaw-dropping salaries to top researchers, marks a shift in leadership from veteran AI scientist Yann LeCun—whose views on AI differ from the mainstream—to a new generation of thinkers like Wang.

Whether this gamble pays off or not, one thing is clear: Alexandr Wang is a name we’ll be hearing a lot more in the future of AI.