Secrets of a 28-year-old Chinese-American genius billionaire: A fridge theft led to dropping out of school and starting a business. His wealth soared thanks to "AI coolies," and he was snatched up by Silicon Valley tycoons at sky-high prices.
On June 24, 2025, it was reported that on June 13, the trading rumor that had stirred up the AI industry finally came to an end. After more than two months of negotiations, this investment pushed the valuation of Scale AI up to $29 billion (approximately RMB 208.2 billion). Eventually, Meta acquired a 49% stake in the well - known AI data unicorn Scale AI for $14.3 billion (approximately RMB 102.8 billion) and brought Alexandr Wang, the 28 - year - old co - founder and CEO of Scale AI (Chinese name: Wang Tao), under its wing.
In recent days, multiple foreign media outlets have intensively disclosed more negotiation details of this significant deal, such as Alexandr Wang's new position at Meta, and more "control clauses" that Meta put forward for Scale AI and Alexandr Wang. They have also delved deeply into Alexandr Wang's growth path and the founding history of Scale AI.
It is reported that Mark Zuckerberg extended an olive branch to Alexandr Wang as early as April, trying to recruit him to Meta. Initially, the offer was $5 billion (approximately RMB 35.9 billion). After nearly two months of negotiations, they finally reached an agreement on $14.3 billion (approximately RMB 102.8 billion). According to the shareholding ratio, Alexandr Wang himself will benefit by over $1 billion (approximately RMB 7.2 billion) from this deal.
Although Alexandr Wang stepped down as CEO, he will still remain on the Scale AI board of directors. He may serve as an executive in the newly established "Superintelligence" department within Meta. There are also reports that discussions have taken place for him to serve as Meta's chief AI officer.
As a star entrepreneur in the AI industry, Alexandr Wang shares many similarities with Mark Zuckerberg. Both started their businesses during their undergraduate years, both dropped out of top US universities, and both are surrounded by intense controversies. With the development of the AI industry, Alexandr Wang's wealth has expanded rapidly, thanks to the efforts of hundreds of thousands of outsourced data annotation workers globally. This has nurtured one of the world's youngest self - made billionaires and the world's youngest female billionaire - Lucy Guo, the co - founder of Scale AI who dropped out midway.
His network of contacts is also a topic of much discussion. He not only has a close personal relationship with Sam Altman, the co - founder and CEO of OpenAI, but also has extensive connections with politicians. His social activities are so intense that it is said that "there is no one in the AI circle he doesn't know."
▲ Alexandr Wang, co - founder and CEO of data annotation startup Scale AI (Source: Time magazine)
From the transaction documents, in addition to equity, Meta will strengthen its control over Scale through mechanisms such as "poison pill clauses" and "liquidation preferences." Alexandr Wang himself also faces dual challenges: he needs to meet Meta's expectations for AI technological breakthroughs and maintain Scale AI's industry position as a neutral data service provider while not being overly involved in Scale AI's business.
Scale AI's clients include direct competitors of Meta such as OpenAI and Google. Meta's entry into the picture has made these clients worried about data security and the leakage of business secrets, and they have even started to scale back their cooperation.
As Scale AI's largest client, Google originally planned to pay about $200 million (approximately RMB 1.44 billion) to Scale AI this year to obtain manually annotated training data, which is crucial for developing cutting - edge AI models such as the Gemini chatbot. After learning of this news, Alphabet, Google's parent company, plans to terminate its cooperation with Scale AI. It is reported that Google has started to contact several of Scale AI's competitors and intends to transfer most of its data annotation business.
How did Meta go to great lengths to recruit Alexandr Wang, and why did it invest so heavily in Scale AI? How will Meta, which has just experienced an antitrust storm, persuade the regulators to approve the deal? How will Scale AI, which has lost its founder, smoothly navigate through this turbulent period?
01 Zuckerberg started recruiting in April, and the negotiation price soared all the way
In mid - April, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta, contacted Alexandr Wang, expressing his hope that Alexandr would join Meta and was willing to pay billions of dollars to make it happen. According to the transaction documents and insiders, Zuckerberg proposed an investment intention of $5 billion (approximately RMB 35.9 billion) in Scale at the beginning of May. Alexandr Wang then raised the price to $20 billion (approximately RMB 143.6 billion).
The negotiation stalled at the beginning of June. The Scale board of directors had a heated debate on how much control to cede to Meta. Although Alexandr Wang has super voting rights through a special equity structure, unlike Zuckerberg's absolute control over Meta, he does not hold the majority of voting rights at Scale. The risks of cooperation are obvious: Alliance with Meta may cause Scale to lose orders from Meta's competitors such as Alphabet and OpenAI.
Top Silicon Valley law firms have intervened in the negotiation. Latham & Watkins represents Meta, and Wilson Sonsini provides consulting for Scale. The latter also hired investment bank Centerview Partners for assistance. Among the four - member Scale board of directors, only two early investors, Dan Levine of Accel and former Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi, are involved in the decision - making. The other two are Alexandr Wang and his friend William Hockey, the co - founder of fintech company Plaid.
The board of directors once considered using "put and call options" to force Meta to acquire the remaining shares in the future, but finally gave up to avoid the breakdown of the negotiation. Meta executive Dave Wehner clearly told Volpi that if Meta cannot obtain investment control, it will not accept the deal to acquire a 49% stake, and is even less willing to be forced to sell its shares as a minority shareholder.
On the evening of June 5, the Scale board of directors finally approved the deal. To stabilize the morale of the employees, the company set aside hundreds of millions of dollars as a bonus pool for employees with unvested options. Former employees who have not exercised their options need to cash in their options through a tender offer. On June 11, the board of directors officially recommended that shareholders accept Meta's acquisition. On June 13, Alexandr Wang tearfully said goodbye to his employees at Scale's San Francisco headquarters and received a standing ovation.
The final transaction price was close to Alexandr Wang's initial asking price. Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale for $14.3 billion (approximately RMB 102.8 billion), slightly higher than the valuation of the startup in its financing round a year ago. It is reported that this young billionaire will hold dual positions as an important figure in Meta's AI field and a member of the Scale board of directors. There are rumors that Alexandr Wang will leave Scale to become an executive in Meta's newly established "Superintelligence" department. Another insider revealed that the two sides have discussed having him serve as Meta's chief AI officer.
02 Meta set up "poison pill clauses" to prevent defection, and the over - $1 - billion gain will be realized in installments over 5 years
The transaction documents show that Meta's achievements in this negotiation far exceeded what the outside world knew. It set up a risk - buffering mechanism for its second - largest deal ever. If Scale is sold within the next two and a half years, Meta will be fully repaid before other shareholders receive any proceeds. This special shareholder right, known as "liquidation preference," will last until the end of 2027. After receiving the huge dividends funded by Meta, the actual proceeds of existing Scale shareholders in a sale may be lower than expected, and the shares of preferred shareholders will be converted into common shares.
According to the plan, Meta will invest in Scale and hire Alexandr Wang, but the shares it acquires do not include voting rights. However, Meta soon added new requirements: in the term sheet on May 31, Meta demanded voting rights on most matters except board elections, the right to receive proceeds ahead of other shareholders, and added "poison pill clauses." If the company finds that Alexandr Wang is still involved in Scale's operations during his tenure at Meta, its shareholding ratio will automatically increase.
In the recently announced deal, the dividends paid by Meta brought an unexpected gain of $12.8 billion (approximately RMB 91.9 billion) to Scale's shareholders. According to insiders, based on the shareholding ratio, Alexandr Wang will receive a gain of over $1 billion (approximately RMB 7.2 billion). The documents show that as long as he continues to work at Meta, most of the cash will be realized in installments over 5 years.
Zuckerberg's deputies were once worried that Meta had invested a huge amount of money in a startup that had lost its founder, becoming a minority shareholder with limited equity rights. In addition, Scale's recent performance has not met its financial expectations. According to the transaction documents and insiders, they tried their best to make the terms more favorable to Meta during the behind - the - scenes negotiations.
Meta still needs to obtain the approval of the US antitrust regulators to participate in the company's decision - making through voting shares. The transaction documents show that Meta agreed to let Alexandr Wang exercise the voting rights of its shares on most company matters. (A Scale spokesperson denied that the deal included a clause to transfer Meta's voting rights to Alexandr Wang.) The key exception is that Meta requires to retain influence over Scale's decisions on sales or financing. If the regulators approve, Meta and Alexandr Wang will jointly control Scale.
This transaction structure reflects Meta's strategy of walking a tightrope between finance, strategy, and regulation. Meta, which has just experienced a major antitrust lawsuit, needs to avoid the risk of the deal being rejected by Washington and does not want to lose investment control after paying $14 billion (approximately RMB 100.5 billion). The core driving all this is Zuckerberg's judgment: Meta has fallen behind in the AI race, and Alexandr Wang can turn the situation around.
03 Starting a business at 19, a friend of the OpenAI founder... Who exactly is Alexandr Wang?
Alexandr Wang was born in New Mexico in 1997. His parents are Chinese immigrant physicists working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. When naming him, they deliberately omitted the letter "e" to make the name eight characters long, taking the auspicious meaning of "8" in Chinese culture, which symbolizes wealth. This math prodigy has won numerous awards since childhood. Violin and math competitions were the main themes of his adolescence. "My arena is math," he summarized in a podcast.
Alexandr Wang attended Los Alamos High School and graduated one year early. He was then admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and planned to pursue a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science. However, after entering MIT, he was eager to start a business and eventually dropped out of school and went to San Francisco, disregarding his family's academic tradition of producing many doctors.
"I was eager to achieve more quickly," Alexandr Wang admitted in a Forbes video. In a TED talk in April 2022, he said, "My parents are outstanding scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and have made many contributions in their fields. I want to engage in a career that can match or even have a greater impact. That's why I decided to become a programmer - I want to change the world."
Alexandr Wang's enthusiasm for socializing was so high that even his former roommate Sam Altman, the co - founder and CEO of OpenAI, once joked with him to tone it down. He also has a close personal relationship with Altman. Before leading OpenAI, Altman was in charge of the top startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC), and Scale was a member of YC's 2016 cohort. According to a mutual friend, the two lived together briefly during the pandemic.
A close friend who requested anonymity said that Alexandr Wang maintains a large network of contacts through direct communication and accurately keeps track of the work dynamics of contacts at all levels. "There is no one in the AI circle he doesn't know." This person said. Even networking master Altman joked about his social intensity last year: "Officially certified, you (Alexandr Wang) definitely attend the most parties. It's almost like a full - time job."
His network extends far beyond the tech circle. Since founding Scale at the age of 19, Alexandr Wang has established friendships with the founders of unicorns such as Plaid and Figma. He has also made friends with Republican congressmen and right - wing opinion leaders in the US, helping Scale to win a large number of government contracts. These resources may help Meta enter the defense technology field.
A former Biden administration official described him as "authoritative and direct" in Washington meetings and said that he actively sought contact with the Biden team. A former employee who accompanied him on a visit revealed that Alexandr Wang "almost enjoys" the pleasure of reversing the underestimation due to his age. After winning a $90 million (approximately RMB 646 billion) contract from the US Department of Defense in 2020, he signed a $250 million (approximately RMB 1.8 billion) US federal procurement agreement in 2022 and was called "the voice of AI in Washington" by foreign media Semafor.
As Scale expanded, Alexandr Wang's wealth and popularity soared simultaneously. At the age of 25, Alexandr Wang was ranked by Forbes as the youngest self - made billionaire with a net worth of $3.6 billion. After appearing at the Davos Forum, he was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2024. As the only shareholder of Scale with super voting rights of "3 votes per share," after receiving cash dividends that will be distributed over 5 years, he is about to be promoted from a paper billionaire to a cash billionaire.
Alexandr Wang's recent actions mirror those of Zuckerberg, who also showed favor to Trump. The two even look similar: they both have curly hair and prefer streetwear. The rare achievement of the two CEOs becoming the world's youngest self - made billionaires one after another will now result in a superior - subordinate relationship.
04 The inspiration for starting a business came from "stolen fridge food," and Scale AI's revenue may reach $2 billion this year
Before entering MIT, Alexandr Wang took a gap year after high school and moved to Silicon Valley. He found a job as an engineer on the Q&A website Quora. It was at Quora that he met his future co - founder of Scale AI - the product director, Lucy Guo, a "Thiel Fellow" funded by Peter Thiel.
▲ A photo of Lucy Guo and Alexandr Wang (Source: Forbes)
In 2016, at the age of 19, Alexandr Wang partnered with Lucy Guo to found Scale AI during the summer after his freshman year at MIT. Scale AI was selected for YC's summer incubation program in 2016 (this accelerator has incubated companies such as Airbnb and Dropbox). Alexandr Wang served as the CEO of Scale AI, and Lucy Guo was in charge of the operations and product design teams.
Jessica Livingston, a partner at YC, recalled in the "Social Radar" podcast that during the interview, Alexandr Wang showed a strange combination of potential and arrogance. She wrote in her notes: "Maybe arrogant or maybe a genius - I lean towards the former, but it's worth investing in." Other partners described this founder with the financial term "high beta." Paul Graham, the co - founder of YC, explained: "It means either a complete failure or world - conquest."
They initially submitted an idea for a doctor - appointment app. A few weeks after joining YC, they abandoned the medical app and turned to machine - learning data annotation services. Inspired by AlphaGo's victory over human chess players, Scale positioned itself as the "Uber of the AI world" and recruited data annotators globally to handle tasks such as autonomous driving image recognition.
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