As a kid, Alexandr Wang used to compete in math and coding coemptions just to secure a free ticket to Disney World. Though he didn’t win the competition, it made a lasting impression on him and pushed him to be a genius coder. His passion landed him full-time coding work at the question-and-answer site Quora when he turned 17. It is here where he would meet his company’s future co-founder. Now at the age of 25, he has become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
What makes his achievement more remarkable is that Wang at age of 19 dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to co-found the software company Scale AI.
Now, he is helping around 300 companies, including US Air Force and Army, to unlock their data’s potential by delivering high-quality training data for AI applications, reports Forbes.
Wang’s parents were physicists and worked on weapons projects for the US military. Now he does too.
San Francisco–based Scale’s technology analyses satellite images much faster than human analysts to determine how much damage Russian bombs are causing in Ukraine.
His AI programme is not only useful for the military. More than 300 companies, including General Motors and Flexport, use Scale.
“Every industry is sitting on huge amounts of data,” Wang says, who appeared on the Forbes Under 30 list in 2018.
“Our goal is to help them unlock the potential of the data and supercharge their businesses with AI.”
According to Forbes, Scale, which generates an estimated $100 million in revenue, is valued at $7.3 billion. It had received a $325 million in funding last year.
Now, Wang’s estimated 15 per cent stake is worth $1 billion, making him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. The next-youngest billionaire is Pedro Franceschi, the 25-year-old Brazilian cofounder of credit card company Brex.
(With inputs from agencies)
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