Big Tech firms are going all in to stay ahead in the AI race. Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all trying anything and everything to hire the best talent for their AI teams. Meta has been the most aggressive one in this regard, which has appointed Alexandr Wang as its new AI officer. The company has been actively trying to poach the best talent for its AI project. Alexander Wang has just been made the chief architect of the same.
Meta hired Alexander earlier this year just to give the company’s superintelligence programme a boost. Mark Zuckerberg made Alexandr the head of Meta’s entire AI operation and even made an eyewatering 14.3 billion dollars investment in his start-up. Wang has now been leading the team of industry experts (best minds in industry) at Meta on their Superintelligence programme. Alexandr even oversees Meta’s other AI product and research teams—all under the umbrella of a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Alexandr Wang’s Beginning’s
Alexandr Wang was just a 19-year-old teen who was working on his AI startup Scale AI in the year 2016. Alexander, back then, was working alongside his friend Lucy Guo on Scaler AI, the two indulged in a startup accelerator programme called. Both of them worked really hard during that phase, sleeping on air mattresses and hustled to realise their dream of Scaler AI. However, as they say, rest is history, the Scaler AI amazed everyone in the tech industry and grabbed eyeballs leading to even big tech firms revising their schemes and plans.
Alexandr Wang’s Meta Changes
Wang has already started restructuring the Meta AI team, splitting it into four separate groups. According to Bloomberg, an internal memo was shared by Alexandr Wang, Meta’s newly appointed chief AI officer and former Scale AI CEO. In the note, Wang said the company needed sharper focus to work towards its long-term vision. “Superintelligence is coming, and in order to take it seriously, we need to organise around the key areas that will be critical to reach it — research, product and infra,” he wrote.
About Alexander and Scaler AI
Wang, a New Mexico native born to Chinese immigrant physicists, dropped out of MIT to start Scale and became a billionaire in his twenties. He has built strong relationships in Silicon Valley and Washington D.C., including with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and U.S. lawmakers. Founded in 2016, Scale provides large volumes of labeled data essential for training advanced AI systems. It does this by managing gig workers through platforms like Rotasks and Outlier. In May 2024, it was valued at nearly $14 billion, with backers including Nvidia, Amazon, and Meta.
