Meta’s $10 Billion Bet on a Company You’ve Never Heard Of

Washington, D.C. – Just three months after Chinese AI firm DeepSeek made global headlines by releasing a model that rivaled the best from Silicon Valley, 28-year-old tech entrepreneur Alexandr Wang is stepping into the policy spotlight in Washington. The founder and CEO of Scale AI, Wang appeared before Congress in April, urging lawmakers to secure the United States’ leadership in artificial intelligence through better infrastructure, streamlined regulations, and centralized data access.

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“The U.S. needs a national AI data reserve, robust power supply for data centers, and a consistent regulatory framework,” Wang told policymakers. Lawmakers seemed receptive, with Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL) welcoming him back to Capitol Hill, calling him “a regular.”

Though less publicly known than OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Alexandr Wang has become a behind-the-scenes powerhouse in the AI ecosystem. Scale AI’s core business — data labeling — has become indispensable to companies like Meta and OpenAI, who rely on clean, annotated datasets to train the large language models (LLMs) powering tools like ChatGPT.

Now, Scale’s influence is poised to surge even further. Over the weekend, Bloomberg reported that Meta is in talks to invest more than $10 billion into Scale AI — potentially one of the largest private funding deals in tech history. That deal would skyrocket Scale’s valuation beyond its $14 billion benchmark set in 2024.

From Self-Driving Cars to Chatbots

Founded nearly a decade ago, Scale began by labeling images for autonomous vehicles — stop signs, pedestrians, lane markers — helping power the first wave of self-driving technology. But as the AI field shifted toward LLMs, so did Scale’s focus. Today, the company plays a crucial role in helping AI systems learn human language and behavior through expertly curated datasets.

According to a source familiar with the company, Scale is increasingly enlisting highly educated workers — from PhDs to healthcare professionals — to label more complex data that can power sophisticated AI tasks.

“The three pillars of AI are chips, talent, and data,” said Wang. “And Scale dominates in data.”

Alexandr Wang – Friends, Rivals, and a Billion-Dollar Future

Alexandr Wang’s trajectory closely parallels that of his friend Sam Altman, whose company OpenAI famously secured a massive investment from Microsoft. Both have served as AI ambassadors to Congress and Silicon Valley, navigating the intersection of innovation and regulation.

As the AI arms race intensifies globally — with China’s DeepSeek proving the U.S. no longer holds an undisputed lead — Scale AI is rapidly becoming a cornerstone of America’s strategy. Whether through partnerships with Big Tech, deepening involvement in policy, or building the datasets of the future, Alexandr Wang’s company is scaling up in every sense of the word.

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