Alexandr Wang: The 19-Year-Old MIT Dropout Behind Meta's $14.3 Billion AI Bet
Alexandr Wang co-founded Scale AI at 19 after leaving MIT. Meta's $14.3 billion investment in June 2025 valued the company at about $29 billion.
Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI has thrust the company's young founder, Alexandr Wang, into the spotlight. The deal, struck in June 2025, gave Meta a 49 per cent stake in Scale AI and valued the company at roughly $29 billion. It also brought Wang into Meta, where he has taken a senior role focused on the company's artificial intelligence efforts.
Early life and education
Wang was born in 1997 in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and grew up in a household with deep science and technology roots. His parents were physicists who worked on weapons programmes for the US military.
He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study computer science and mathematics, but did not complete his degree. At 19, he left MIT to concentrate on building Scale AI, a decision taken as artificial intelligence was advancing quickly and companies were hunting for large volumes of high-quality data to train their systems.
Building Scale AI
Wang co-founded Scale AI in 2016 with Lucy Guo. The company began by offering data-labeling services to businesses developing AI and machine-learning systems. As demand for AI grew, it expanded its work with major technology companies and organisations, preparing the data needed to train AI models.
That growth turned Scale AI into one of the prominent names in the industry and made Wang one of the youngest entrepreneurs to build a billion-dollar company.
Why it matters
Wang's path diverges from the conventional route of finishing college before starting a career. His story also underlines the growing importance of computer science, mathematics, AI and data skills for students eyeing technology careers.