07/09/2026
Meet Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI. Wang grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where both of his parents were physicists. At the age of 17, he made it to the U.S. Physics Team and later attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
At the age of 19, he co-founded Scale AI with Lucy Guo. His idea was simple: pay people to label data properly so that machines finally had something to learn from. This idea was sparked after his yogurt was stolen by his roommates during his first year. He put a camera inside the fridge but, unfortunately, caught nobody.
Soon, his software company was powering self-driving vehicles. He secured a staggering $350 million contract with the U.S. Army and later partnered with OpenAI.
At the age of 24, he became the world's youngest self made billionaire. By 2024, Scale AI was generating $850 million a year. In June, Meta paid $14.3 billion to acquire a 49% stake, valuing the company at $29 billion.
