Alexandr Wang: Meta's billion-dollar deal

Alexandr Wang (left) is one of the richest self-made billionaires in the world (Source: X)

A famous anecdote about former midfielder Paul Scholes is that Inter Milan tried to recruit him from Manchester United. According to Talksport, former Inter president Massimo Moratti once said: “We once gave Manchester United a blank check. But when we spoke to Scholes, he simply replied: 'If you want me, you have to buy the whole club!'”

Scholes’ answer is actually a form of what the financial world calls “Acqui-hiring” – a combination of the words “Acquisition” and “Hiring”. These are deals to buy back shares of a company not because of the product or revenue, but because of the people behind it.

And Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta just did exactly that, spending $15 billion to buy a 49% stake in technology company Scale AI. In theory, this investment helps Meta strengthen its relationship with a company that plays a key role in the ambition to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI). But in reality, Silicon Valley experts believe that the money is to “own” CEO Alexandr Wang - America’s U30 technology genius.

The unicorn behind the unicorn

Before the Meta acquisition was announced last week, Alexandr Wang was little known outside the tech world. His name sounds almost identical to that of another Asian-American fashion designer, Alexander Wang.

Alexandr Wang's name became known to the public in early 2025 with an open letter to US President Donald Trump titled "America Must Win the AI War", in which he asserted that the US was at risk of losing its leading position in the AI race and proposed five solutions to help the US regain the upper hand and continue to be the leader in AI.

But for Silicon Valley, Wang has long been a monster, having become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2021 at the age of 24. Born in 1997 to an Asian family, Alexandr Wang grew up surrounded by physics models and algorithms. Both his parents were physicists who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was associated with the legendary Manhattan Project during World War II.

Wang has been passionate about mathematics and computer programming since he was a child. In 2013, he qualified for the Mathematical Olympiad Program and was selected for the US Physics Team the following year. He was a finalist in the USA Computer Science Olympiad (USACO) in 2012 and 2013.

As a teenager, he worked as a programmer at Quora. Wang briefly attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and spent time developing algorithms at high-frequency trading firm Hudson River Trading, before dropping out to co-found Scale AI in 2016.

Scale AI is an artificial intelligence company that specializes in providing data labeling and model evaluation services to support the development of AI applications. With a vision focused on data infrastructure - a core element often overlooked in AI races - Scale quickly became an important partner of many leading corporations and companies in the world. Scale AI's customer list ranges from big brands such as Google, Microsoft, Open AI, Paypal, Samsung, Toyota, Uber... to government agencies.

In March 2025, Scale AI announced that it had reached an agreement with the US Department of Defense (DoD) regarding its flagship AI Agent program, marking an important step forward in the controversial application of artificial intelligence in the military field. The program, called “ Thunderforge ”, is considered by the Pentagon as the flagship program to deploy AI agents to serve the US military’s military planning and operations.

With such achievements in just under a decade, Scale AI quickly became a technology unicorn - a term referring to private startups valued at more than $1 billion. In 2021, Scale AI was valued at $7 billion and with Meta's deal, the company's value has reached nearly $30 billion after nine years of establishment.

In Silicon Valley, “Acquihiring” deals are not uncommon. Just last year, Microsoft paid $650 million for AI startup Inflection, thereby recruiting founder Mustafa Suleyman and his associates.

Also in 2024, Google paid $2.7 billion for Character.AI, thereby recruiting AI expert Noan Shazeer. The American scientist was with Google from 2000 to 2021 before leaving to found Character.AI. Realizing that he was losing the AI race, Google made the deal with two goals: to bring Shazeer to lead the Gemini AI project, and to own Character.AI's advanced technologies.

Every billion-dollar deal mentioned above is part of a larger plan, and Meta is no exception.

Meta's Calculations

Alexandr Wang rose to prominence in the tech world not because of his professional abilities as a scientist. According to The Information, Wang is “at heart a businessman with a technical background, not the kind of elite researcher that Mark Zuckerberg often favors.” The Financial Times quoted many people who worked with Wang as saying that his strength lies not in his ability to manage human resources or promote in-depth AI research, but in developing and promoting the company.

Wang was present at President Donald Trump’s January inauguration, though his presence was overshadowed by more prominent billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and his former roommate Sam Altman. Just a day later, he made his mark by taking out a full-page ad in the Washington Post to publish an open letter to President Trump. It was a rare bold move, and Zuckerberg needed it.

Business Insider said it had spoken to many people in the technology industry, and they compared Meta's acquisition of Scale AI to the way Apple spent $3 billion to own Beats in 2014. The reason was not because Tim Cook wanted to own the headphone division, but "wanted the artistic sense and temperament of founder Jimmy Iovine."

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a habit of appointing longtime associates to senior positions. But “outsider” Wang will be a rare exception when joining Meta and taking on an important role. Zuckerberg is forced to break with tradition when Meta is lagging behind its competitors in the “AI arms race”.

Although Zuckerberg has declared “AI is one of the most important inventions in human history” and put the company’s 2025 focus on AI, the company’s AI Llama model has not received many positive reviews. Wang’s arrival is expected to help Meta change the situation.

The first plus point that Wang and his colleagues bring is that the data has been used to train leading AIs. Wang's Scale AI has provided input data development and labeling services to many leading AI companies, including OpenAI - the company behind the world's most popular AI ChatGPT.

In addition to data training, which is considered a difficult and obscure job in AI, Wang is also responsible for participating in the research and development project of "Super Intelligence".

OpenAI, Google, and many others are pursuing the goal of developing “ Artificial General Intelligence ” (AGI), an AI that can perform every task the human brain can. It’s an ambitious goal, though recent research from Apple suggests we’re still a long way from it. According to the New York Times, “Super Intelligence” could even surpass AGI if it could be developed.

Besides his professional value, Wang’s joining is also like a blockbuster contract, affirming Meta’s willingness to welcome top technology experts with huge remuneration. He has had the image of a “self-made billionaire” since he was very young, has enough appeal to the media and human resources, and has good relationships both in the technology industry and the elite.

Los Alamos - the land that went down in history with the Manhattan Project and the birth of the atomic bomb - will likely once again be mentioned in the future as the birthplace of a character who could change the entire landscape of the global AI war: Alexandr Wang.

LY QUOC THINH

Source: https://nhandan.vn/alexandr-wang-thuong-vu-bac-ty-cua-meta-post889134.html