Alexandr Wang

Alexandr Wang (Chinese: 汪滔; pinyin: Wāng Tāo;^[2] born January 1997) is an American billionaire entrepreneur who has been Meta's chief AI officer since 2025.^[3] He is the co-founder and former CEO of Scale AI, an artificial intelligence company that provides data labeling and large language model evaluation services to develop AI applications.^[4][5] In 2021, he was the world's youngest self-made billionaire at age 24.^[6][7][8] Forbes estimated his net worth at $3.6 billion as of April 2025^[update].^[9]

Alexandr Wang
Wang in 2025
Born	January 1997 (age 28)[1] Los Alamos, New Mexico, U.S.
Education	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (dropped out)
Title	Chief AI Officer at Meta; Founder of Scale AI

Early life

Wang was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico in January 1997.^[1] He is the son of Chinese immigrants who worked as physicists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.^[10] Wang was passionate about math and computer programming since childhood. He qualified for the Math Olympiad Program in 2013, the US Physics Team in 2014, and was a USACO finalist in 2012 and 2013.^[11] He was educated at Los Alamos High School after which he moved to Silicon Valley to become a software engineer at Addepar, a wealth management company.^[12][13] During his teens, Wang worked for Quora as a software programmer.^[14] He briefly attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had a stint as an algorithm developer at the high-frequency trading firm Hudson River Trading before he dropped out to co-found Scale AI in 2016.^[15][16]

Career

In 2016, Wang co-founded Scale AI, an artificial intelligence company that provides data labeling and model evaluation services to develop AI applications. Former Amazon executive Jeff Wilke served as an advisor to Wang.^[17] In 2021, the company's valuation hit $7.3 billion, briefly giving Wang a $1 billion net worth, as he owned 15% of the company.^[5][18] Scale AI has received defense contracts from the United States Armed Forces, and has been tapped by the Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to test and evaluate the safety and reliability of large language models for military planning and decision-making.^[19][20][21]

Wang joined the board of Expedia Group in 2023.^[22] In July 2023, Wang testified before a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing, speaking on the challenges and potential solutions that the U.S. government faced in adopting AI.^[23]

In June 2024, Wang announced that Scale AI formalized a merit, excellence, and intelligence (MEI) hiring policy, stating: "We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character — and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic." MEI is a similar yet opposing practice to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).^[24]

In January 2025, Wang was among a group of tech-based founders and chief executive officers at the second inauguration of Donald Trump.^[25] He also wrote a letter directly addressed to President Trump, declaring that "America must win the AI war".^[26] Later in the month, Wang spoke at the World Economic Forum, highlighting the AI race between the United States and China, specifically surrounding the capabilities of DeepSeek.^[27] In February 2025, Wang met with multiple world leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron,^[28] and United States House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson, who also oversees the House Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence,^[29] speaking to them about global cooperation surrounding AI.^[28] In June 2025, Meta Platforms purchased 49% of Scale AI and Wang moved to work for Meta. He stepped down as CEO of Scale but remained on the board of Scale AI.^[30] Meta announced that it will invest $14.3 billion in Scale AI, which will be overseen by Meta Superintelligence Labs.^[31][32]

Personal life

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang was roommates with his friend Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI.^[25]

Recognition

In 2018, Wang was named to Forbes's 30 Under 30 list in the Enterprise Technology category.^[33] He was named to the same list in 2021.^[34] He was also named to the Time 100 Next, which recognizes emerging leaders who are shaping the future of their fields, and to the Time 100 AI list.^[7]