Alexandr Wang, founder of San Francisco-based AI infrastructure company Scale AI, warned that the intensifying competition between the US and China in artificial intelligence development will define the future of global tech.
Speaking at Web Summit Qatar 2025, Wang emphasised that the US must lead the race as China rapidly catches up with innovations like the DeepSeek AI model.
“It is very clear that there are two countries in which the preponderance of AI development and AI innovations are happening, and those are the US and China,” Wang said, adding that the US should win this AI race.
Wang pointed to China’s rapid advancements, highlighting DeepSeek, a Chinese-developed AI model, as evidence of the country’s growing capabilities in the field. “Many innovations are invented in the US, but Chinese tech has caught up fast,” he added.
Wang believes that AI development is heading toward a critical juncture where most countries and companies will have to decide between aligning with either the American or Chinese tech stacks.
“We are at a moment where nearly every country and company will build AI innovations on top of the U.S. tech stack or Chinese tech stack, and so that is one of the tangible areas we can see playing out,” he explained. “Which AI stack will underpin the global order is the critical question now.”
The decision, Wang argued, is not merely technical but ideological. “Choosing which tech stack depends on what ideological decisions need to be made in the model. Probably the ones that matter are the question of free speech and democracy versus communist society. These are some of the key tensions that exist with this decision,” he said.
Wang emphasized that AI technology should reflect meaningful cultural differences across regions and suggested that US tech companies are already addressing this challenge.
“We work closely with AI model developers in the US like Google and OpenAI. These models do reflect the cultural differences of different regions,” he said.
Looking ahead, Wang outlined Scale AI’s vision for AI’s role in society. “Our goal is to build AI tutors for every citizen. Can we enable a more efficient health system? These are the kinds of questions we are working on,” he said.
Founded in 2016 by Wang and Lucy Guo, Scale AI provides data labeling and AI model training solutions that accelerate the development of artificial intelligence. The company has worked with major organisations, including OpenAI, the US Department of Defence, and Tesla.
Backed by leading investors such as Sequoia Capital, Accel, and Tiger Global, Scale AI has positioned itself as a key player in the evolving AI landscape, shaping the way models learn and interact with human-generated data.
Note: The reporter is in Doha, covering Web Summit Qatar 2025.
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