From MIT dropout to AI mogul: how the world’s youngest self-made tech billionaire Alexandr Wang builds data empire - VnExpress International

At his startup Scale AI, workers perform data labeling — the essential process of creating and organizing content that helps train AI systems to better interpret human language. Their tasks include writing haikus, summarizing news, and crafting stories in languages such as Xhosa and Urdu, all to supply chatbots with the linguistic context they need.

The labor-intensive operation has become so in demand by businesses eager to enter the AI race that Scale’s revenue pace tripled last year, boosting its valuation to $14 billion. Wang holds an estimated 14% stake in the company, which was valued at $13.8 billion following a $1 billion fundraising round in May 2024, according to Forbes.

The founder compares his company's role in the AI revolution to that of Nvidia's chips, which The Wall Street Journal describes as the hottest tech company in the world.

"Data is the new code," the Scale AI's CEO told Forbes in 2019, explaining his motivation for launching the company.

Born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to Chinese immigrant parents who worked as scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Wang was exposed to advanced physics from an early age.

Wang began thinking about entrepreneurship in ninth grade, when he and a friend created a Google Doc filled with startup ideas.

As a teenager, he played violin, competed in math and physics contests, and traveled for debate tournaments. He graduated from high school a year early to work in Silicon Valley, joining Q&A platform Quora as an engineer.

World's youngest self-made billionaire Alexandr Wang. Photo from X

"After my first few months of working 12-hour days at Quora, I remember being really surprised at how much I’d improved as an engineer," he wrote in a 2016 blog. "It felt like I went from a code monkey to a legitimate system architect in just a few months, even though I had been coding for years beforehand."

While studying mathematics and computer science at MIT, Wang began developing Ava, an iPhone app for booking medical appointments. As he weighed summer internship offers during his first year, a conversation with Eric Wu, CEO of Opendoor, convinced him to take a different path, pursuing entrepreneurship while still in school.

Wang decided to leave MIT and launch his startup. "I knew I would regret it if I never took the risk to be an entrepreneur at the perfect time," he wrote in his blog.

In the summer of 2016, Wang entered Ava into a startup accelerator program run by the renowned venture firm Y Combinator, which was then headed by Sam Altman, now CEO of OpenAI. Shortly after, he and co-founder Lucy Guo expanded the concept into Scale AI.

Within a few months of launching, Scale secured Cruise and Tesla as early clients and began building out its contractor network. In 2017, Wang introduced Remotasks, a subsidiary that hired affordable overseas labor for data annotation work, while Guo helped grow the workforce by recruiting through Facebook groups.

He ran Scale like a classic Silicon Valley startup, promoting internal mantras such as "Why Not Faster" and "Run Through Walls." Venture capital followed, including from early Facebook investor Accel and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

Initially, the company tested various data types, from PDFs to imagery, but early efforts failed to gain traction. The breakthrough came when Scale focused on sensor data and computer vision, leading to major partnerships.

In 2019, Scale AI achieved unicorn status, reaching a US$1 billion valuation, and signed its first generative AI contract with OpenAI.

A year later, it partnered with the U.S. military on AI data infrastructure. Although Meta canceled a US$40 million deal during the tech downturn in 2023, forcing a 20% workforce reduction, Scale rebounded quickly.

The global excitement around generative AI following the viral success of ChatGPT brought renewed momentum, helping the company secure a US$120 million contract with Google to support the Gemini language model.

After raising US$1 billion in fresh funding, Scale opened a new office in San Francisco last summer and is now seeking a US$25 billion valuation via a secondary share sale, according to Business Insider.

Wang’s ability to navigate both Silicon Valley and Washington has set him apart in a tech industry typically rooted in California, with The Information describing him as a "crafty opportunist" for his calculated approach. One lawmaker called him "a true friend", a rare endorsement in a deeply divided capital.