A 25-year-old Asian-American MIT dropout gives Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos a run for their money through his Scale AI platform. This platform aims to accelerate the advancement of AI applications and is used by PayPal, Toyota, General Motors, and other big American companies. And his name is Alexandr Wang.
Wang founded the software with fellow tech geek Lucy Guo. He is a 25-year-old self-made billionaire making waves in the tech industry. So what exactly is Scale AI, and how did this young entrepreneur and founder make it to the Forbes list of billionaires? Let’s dig deeper.
Who is Alexandr Wang?
Alexandr Wang is a college dropout that started tinkering with tech and coding at a young age. The young tech genius claims that he got it from his parents, both physicists by profession. Hailing from New Mexico, his parents worked on American military projects, as per Prestige magazine.
Having acquired some innate intellect, Wang would join math and coding competitions while still in school. The tech whizz nourished his love for coding by gaining new opportunities in his early years after high school. While most high school students think about which university to go to after graduation and their plans for college, Wang worked for Quora full time by the age of 17.
A summer project that turned Wang’s life around
Alexandr Wang started Scale AI with fellow tech whizz Lucy Guo during the summer. He told his mom that it would only be a summer project. However, Wang never went back to school and ventured on to change the world of AI.
Wang studied Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science at MIT (Massachusetts Institute for Technology). He dropped out of MIT at the age of 19 and completed his first year at New England University. During that summer, he met up with another tech genius Lucy Guo whom he met while both were working at a category in Quora, the question and answer channel.
The tandem then invested in the company with the help of Y Combinator, an American startup accelerator.
Getting funding
In 2021, Wang received millions of funding. Scale AI received the financial backing of around $350 million last year. The platform was already enjoying a revenue of $100 million on top of that funding, which values the company at $7.3 billion.
Forbes estimates the young entrepreneur’s net worth at $1 billion since the young CEO has a one-percent stake in the company. The esteemed digital magazine also listed Wang as the 2,534th world billionaire on the Forbes list. He also got into Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in 2018, which exhibits the top up-and-coming entrepreneurs, intellects, and thought leaders in different industries. Wang and Guo bagged the spot in the Enterprise Technology category.
Trusted by big companies worldwide
Scale AI is a platform that helps in the development of AI applications. With so much data that can be aggregated online, Scale AI leverages this data to make the most out of its AI systems. The platform is even helping analyze satellite images of the impact that Russian forces made on Ukraine.
Since launching, over 300 companies have seen the potential of the platform. The biggest companies using the platform are Lyft, Toyota, PayPal, General Motors, SAP, and the American Military.
