Not Elon Musk or OpenAI CEO, this is the most “dangerous” CEO in the AI ​​world, the one who was just paid $15 billion by Meta to recruit him.

By recruiting Wang and Scale AI under its wing, Meta gains access to invaluable connections and knowledge in the AI ​​industry.

While the tech world is focused on the spats between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, a young man is quietly holding the key to power in the entire artificial intelligence industry. Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old CEO of Scale AI, has just become the center of attention when Meta decided to spend a whopping $15 billion to recruit him to join its newly established “superintelligence” lab.

Wang is not a household name like other tech moguls. But his position in the AI ​​ecosystem is more influential than many people realize. What makes Wang so dangerous is not his bombastic statements or public controversies, but his control of the most important thing in the AI ​​world: data.

Scale AI CEO, Alexandr Wang

Turning trash into gold for AI

Scale AI, the company Wang founded in 2016 at the age of 19 after dropping out of MIT, specializes in providing high-quality training data for artificial intelligence systems. It sounds simple, but this is the indispensable “raw material” to create breakthroughs in the field of AI. Every advancement from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft must go through Wang’s hands before being released to the public.

What’s remarkable is that Scale AI doesn’t just serve one company. Its client list includes most of the biggest names in the industry: OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and of course Meta. This means Wang can see the growth strategies, weaknesses, and next steps of all the big guys before anyone else does.

Wang isn’t just focused on the private market. He’s building a domestic “AI army” for defense contracts with the U.S. government. Scale AI has received $60.6 million in government contracts and has been used to analyze satellite imagery in Ukraine. Wang believes that generative AI could be applied more broadly in the military, perhaps even changing the nature of war when trained on data from the 1.3 million active-duty U.S. military personnel.

This unique position has helped Wang become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2022 at the age of 25. With a 15% stake in Scale AI valued at $13.8 billion, his net worth now exceeds $2 billion. But more importantly, he has built a valuable network of connections in the tech world.

Wang’s personal connections to key industry figures are also notable. He once lived with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and both appeared at President Trump’s inauguration. Immediately after the event, Wang took out a full-page ad with the message: “America must win the AI ​​war.”

Wang’s philosophy is clear: “There are two things I believe deeply. First, AI is a tremendous force for good and should be adopted as widely as possible. Second, we need to ensure that America is in the lead.” He sees Scale AI as “picks and shovels in the generative AI gold rush” and wants to maintain America’s AI dominance in “an era of great power competition.”

Meta’s Unique Recruiting

It was these connections that prompted Mark Zuckerberg to spend $15 billion to acquire Scale AI and bring Wang to Meta. The world’s largest social media company was falling behind in the AI ​​race, with many products failing and top researchers leaving the company to join competitors. By recruiting Wang, Meta not only gained a talent, but also access to Scale AI’s deep relationships with every major AI company, knowledge and experience in data cleaning and AI training, as well as an understanding of how the industry is evolving—things that no amount of money can buy.

The deal has deeper implications. Meta has just established a new lab dedicated to “superintelligence”—AI that surpasses human intelligence—and Wang will head up this ambitious project. This means he will have access to all of Scale AI’s competitors’ trade secrets through contracts it has in place.

Behind Scale AI’s power lies a massive global workforce. The company, through its subsidiary Remotasks, employs 240,000 contract workers in countries like Kenya, the Philippines, and Venezuela. These workers label and clean data for low wages, often as little as $1 an hour. This is the invisible “factory” behind the AI ​​revolution that few people know about.

Meta spent $15 billion to bring Wang under its wing.

The road ahead is not without challenges, however. Scale AI recently laid off 20% of its full-time staff due to market “uncertainty.” Its secondary market share price is down 42% since its last funding round in July 2021. Rivals like Surge AI, Labelbox, and Snorkel AI are emerging with competing solutions, while some large customers have expressed concerns about the quality of Scale’s data.

These challenges have not diminished investors’ confidence in Wang. “He didn’t get here because he was a genius—MIT produces a lot of teenage dropouts,” said William Hockey, co-founder of Plaid and a Scale board member. “He has a crazy work ethic like no one I’ve ever met.”

With nearly a quarter of a million data labelers and revenue expected to double to $2 billion by 2025, Scale AI is still growing strongly. The Meta deal not only brings in a huge amount of money, but also cements Wang’s status as one of the most powerful people in the tech world.

While Elon Musk makes headlines with his outrageous claims and Sam Altman with his groundbreaking AI products, Alexandr Wang is quietly controlling the infrastructure that makes all that magic happen. And that’s why he’s considered the most “dangerous” CEO in the AI ​​world right now.