AI prodigy Alexandr Wang secures place at Meta, formerly Facebook, marking his entry into the tech titan's inner circle.
In a significant move, Meta, the tech giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg, has appointed Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old CEO of Scale AI, as its first-ever Chief AI Officer. This appointment marks the beginning of a new era for Meta as it positions itself to become a leading player in the global AI race [1][2][3][4].
Born in 1997 to Chinese immigrant parents who were physicists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alexandr Wang has a unique background that sets him apart. His parents were involved in the development of the atomic bomb by Robert Oppenheimer's team [5]. Wang's entrepreneurial spirit led him to drop out of MIT and start his own company in San Francisco [7].
The $14.3 billion acquisition of Scale AI by Meta in July 2025 was the company's biggest deal since buying WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014. The deal has brought Wang into Meta, where he is now leading the newly formed "Meta Superintelligence Labs," a high-profile AI research and product team [1][2][3][4].
Zuckerberg's primary goal is to achieve the holy grail of developing systems that surpass human intelligence [2]. To catch up with rivals in the race to develop and commercialize AI, Zuckerberg is betting on Wang [8]. The superintelligence team includes prominent AI experts from leading organizations like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Apple, some with compensation packages rumored to exceed $100 million [1][2].
Wang's arrival at Meta has had a "halo effect," with Zuckerberg continuing to recruit top talent as Meta reinvents itself as an AI titan [4]. Notably, Zuckerberg has rearranged the desks at Meta's Menlo Park headquarters to seat Wang and other top AI talent as close to himself as possible [9].
In recent months, Wang and Zuckerberg have become close, spending time at Zuckerberg's houses in Tahoe and Palo Alto, California [10]. Wang has been described as the ideal "wartime CEO" to lead Meta's push [6]. He has also implemented a "MEI" ("merit, excellence, and intelligence") hiring policy at Scale AI, ditching diversity, equity, and inclusion policies [1].
Scale AI and Nvidia are among the few companies with deep relationships with top AI research teams, according to venture capitalist Dan Levine of Accel [11]. Scale AI's services were in high demand, making Wang the world's youngest billionaire by 2021 [12].
In 2016, Wang started Scale AI with Lucy Guo, focusing on data labeling and management for AI models [13]. The company has since become critical to training AI models, making it a valuable asset for Meta's AI ambitions.
Zuckerberg also plans to spend hundreds of billions on two gigantic data centres, Prometheus and Hyperion, further solidifying Meta's commitment to AI [14]. With Wang at the helm, Meta is poised to make significant strides in the world of AI, pursuing ambitious "superintelligence" goals and advancing large language model (LLM) competitiveness.
[1] Bloomberg [2] The Verge [3] TechCrunch [4] The Wall Street Journal [5] The New York Times [6] The Washington Post [7] Forbes [8] Reuters [9] The Information [10] Business Insider [11] Axios [12] CNBC [13] Fast Company [14] CNET
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a critical focus for Meta, with Alexandr Wang taking the reins as the first-ever Chief AI Officer. As the leader of the newly formed "Meta Superintelligence Labs," Wang is driving Meta's ambitious goal to surpass human intelligence, leveraging technology to its full potential in the global AI race.
