Alexandr Wang, el joven prodigio de la IA de Meta

At the age of 29, Alexandr Wang, the director of Meta's superintelligence labs, is considered a potential successor to Mark Zuckerberg. In late 2022, when Wang had to report to Meta executives about the progress of the company's AI investment, he opted to present a "summary report" containing minimal details. The meeting did not reassure financial director Susan Li: "If this doesn't work, the financial consequences will be very, very severe," Li stated.

However, last Monday, Wang was able to provide Li and the others with clear evidence that the multimillion-dollar investment was bearing fruit: the launch of Meta's new AI model, Muse Wonder, caused the company's stock to rise and boosted Wang's reputation. At 29 years old - leading Meta's superintelligence labs - Wang has gained fame and is now hailed as the man who has revitalized Meta's push in AI.

Mark Zuckerberg claims that the Muse Wonder launch has returned Meta to the forefront of AI, just five weeks after Meta's new AI agent, Muse, became the most widely downloaded free app on Apple and Android app stores. Last week, Wang also announced that Meta would partner with Apple to implement its "open weights" AI models on Mac computers.

Wang grew up in New Mexico and is the son of two Chinese-American physicists. He was a math prodigy, finishing high school a year early and moving to Silicon Valley, where he worked for the question-and-answer website Quora. At 18, he enrolled at MIT but dropped out a year later to found Scale AI in 2016. This company provides labeled and selected data for AI model training and has signed agreements with entities such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Mike Volpi, one of Scale's early investors and a partner at Hanabi Capital, describes Wang as possessing not only intelligence and technical prowess but also a deep analysis capability and communication style. Volpi notes that Wang is early and exhibits maturity beyond his years. Wang has a vast network within the tech industry, having shared a flat with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Scale signed its first contract with Facebook in 2019, and Wang met Zuckerberg two years later. The relationship took a sharp turn last year, following the release of a disappointing AI model by Meta, which led to Zuckerberg's restructuring of the Meta AI team and leadership renewal. Wang and Zuckerberg met multiple times in 2015 to discuss the possibility of Wang joining Meta.

Together, they outlined a one-year roadmap aimed at returning the company to the AI forefront. Those close to Wang describe him as an "executor" capable of speaking the same language as AI engineers. However, upon joining Meta as AI director, he faced both internal and external pressures, as he had no prior experience in AI model training.

During his early months leading the team, Wang unleashed a talent war in Silicon Valley, hiring star researchers from competitors. Despite this, the first models released under his leadership failed to keep pace with rivals. Nonetheless, he continued to receive Zuckerberg's full attention and support. Anastasios Angelopoulos, CEO of the open platform for AI model evaluation Arena, states that Meta has achieved significant advancements with Wang: "While they are not yet at the level of Anthropic and OpenAI models, the progress has been enormous.

And all thanks to Alex." A person who has worked with both Wang and Zuckerberg notes the similarities between the two, but claims, "Mark has had to navigate far more storms than Alex." During Wang's tenure, Scale faced several controversies, including a lawsuit alleging that the company required employees to evaluate extreme material as part of their data labeling work.

The lawsuit was later withdrawn. Wang also clashed with co-founder Lucy Guo, whom he fired in 2018. However, Wang has managed to maintain a relatively unblemished public image, allowing Zuckerberg to view him as the ideal candidate to lead Meta's AI plans and grant him considerable autonomy, a privilege few in the company enjoy. Zuckerberg now considers Wang a potential successor to himself.