Meet Alexandr Wang, Meta $15 billion bet to catch up in global AI race

Meta is bringing on Scale AI's CEO Alexandr Wang in a deal worth up to $15 billion to lead a new superintelligence lab and reboot its AI ambitions with cutting-edge data expertise

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Meta is bringing on Alexandr Wang—the 27-year-old co-founder and CEO of Scale AI—to head its newly formed superintelligence lab. The deal, reportedly valued at up to $15 billion, marks one of Meta’s boldest steps yet in its bid to regain a leadership position in the global race for artificial intelligence.

 

Wang, who founded Scale AI in 2016 after dropping out of MIT and joining Y Combinator, has built a data-labelling juggernaut that powers the AI systems of OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google’s Waymo. Under his leadership, Scale AI expanded from helping autonomous vehicles with street-level data to enabling the training of large language models (LLMs)—the core of modern generative AI.

 

Alexandr Wang: Meta's $15 million bet 

 

At 24, Wang became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. The son of Chinese physicists, he scaled Scale AI into one of the most influential enablers of AI development. His company’s strengths in labelling, data infrastructure, and deployment now form the backbone of Meta’s renewed AI ambitions.

 

According to The Verge, Meta has acquired a 49 per cent stake in Scale AI, valuing the firm at $29 billion. Much of this investment will be directed at fuelling Meta’s push into next-generation AI, particularly around autonomy, decision-making, and reasoning systems.

From Scale to superintelligence

 

Meta’s acquisition is more than just a financial investment—it signals a strategic reset. While the company has invested heavily in AI across WhatsApp, Instagram and smart glasses, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now focusing on artificial superintelligence (ASI): machines with reasoning capacities beyond human cognition.

 

The new superintelligence lab, to be led by Wang and reporting directly to Zuckerberg, will assemble elite AI researchers reportedly offered industry-leading compensation. Wang’s practical, data-first approach represents a generational pivot from Meta’s long-time AI chief Yann LeCun, who remains at Meta but is increasingly sidelined due to his divergence from prevailing AI strategies.

 

Alexandr Wang's vision for the next leap in AI

 

Wang maintains a low profile compared to some of Silicon Valley’s more outspoken figures, but his impact is widely recognised. His belief in the primacy of clean, scalable data aligns with a growing consensus that the next breakthroughs in AI will hinge more on training data than novel algorithms—an area where Scale AI excels.

 

For Meta, this move may be a watershed moment. The company has trailed OpenAI and Anthropic in model development and deployment. With Wang now helming its new lab, Meta is betting on a fresh chapter—one that could reassert its dominance in the increasingly competitive AI arena.