Meta has brought on Alexandr Wang, the 27-year-old CEO and co-founder of Scale AI, to lead its newly launched superintelligence lab. The move is part of Meta’s bold new strategy to catch up in the global race for artificial intelligence. The deal is reportedly valued at up to $15 billion, making it one of the company’s largest AI-related investments to date.
Wang founded Scale AI in 2016 after dropping out of MIT and joining startup accelerator Y Combinator. His company became a key player in the AI space by providing high-quality data labeling services to major tech firms including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Waymo.
Over the years, Scale AI evolved from supporting self-driving car projects to enabling the training of large language models (LLMs), which power today’s generative AI systems.
At just 24, Wang became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. With a strong focus on data infrastructure, his leadership helped Scale AI grow into a critical enabler of AI development worldwide. Now, those same capabilities will be central to Meta’s next phase in AI.
According to The Verge, Meta has taken a 49% stake in Scale AI, valuing the company at $29 billion. Much of the investment will go towards advancing Meta’s efforts in artificial superintelligence—AI that can reason, make decisions, and potentially surpass human-level cognition.
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The new lab, which Wang will lead and report directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is expected to attract top talent in the field. It also marks a strategic shift away from the company’s current AI leadership under Yann LeCun, who will remain at Meta but in a reduced role.
Wang, known for his quiet but effective leadership style, emphasizes the importance of clean, scalable data in building advanced AI systems. This focus aligns with the growing belief in the tech industry that better data—not just better algorithms—will be the key to future breakthroughs.
For Meta, this partnership with Wang and Scale AI may signal a turning point. After falling behind rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, the company is betting big on this new chapter to reestablish itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence.