Alexandr Wang grew up in the shadow of the top-secret Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, where the US produced the first atomic weapon during WWII.
His parents were scientists who worked on military weapons programs. Wang's six-year-old San Francisco–based startup, Scale AI, has already signed three contracts for $350 million or more, depending on the government's demands, to assist the Air Force and Army in using artificial intelligence. For a 25-year-old, this is rather outstanding.
To evaluate how much damage Russian bombs are causing in Ukraine, Scale's technology analyzes satellite photographs far faster than human experts.
It isn't simply helpful for the military. Scale, which Wang founded when he was 19, is used by over 300 organizations, including GM and Flexport, to help them mine gold from rivers of raw data, such as millions of shipping papers or raw film from self-driving vehicles.
Wang, who was included to Forbes' Under 30 list in 2018, adds, "Every sector is sitting on tremendous volumes of data." "Our objective is to assist them in unlocking the data's potential and using AI to accelerate their businesses."
Scale, which earns an estimated $100 million in sales, was valued at $7.3 billion in a $325 million fundraising round last year. Wang is the world's youngest self-made millionaire, with a 15 percent share valued at $1 billion. (The next-youngest is Pedro Franceschi, a 25-year-old Brazilian cofounder of the credit card firm Brex.)
Wang was a math prodigy as a youngster, competing in national math and coding contests. He entered his first national math competition in sixth grade, hoping to win a free trip to Disney World.
Although he did not win the tournament, he did secure his trip to the magical country. By the age of 17, he was working full-time as a programmer at Quora, a question-and-answer website where he met Lucy Guo, Scale's cofounder. He took a temporary detour at MIT to study machine learning before launching Scale with Guo the summer after his first year, with funding from Google Ventures.
Wang explains, "I told my parents it was simply going to be something I did for the summer." "Obviously, I didn't return to school."
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