The youngest self-made billionaire in the world is a 25-year-old who dropped out of college

By Cole Horton

Alexander Wang grew up in the shadow of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, the top secret place where the United States developed its first atomic bomb during World War II.

His parents were physicists working on armaments programs for the army. He does the same now: Wang’s San Francisco-based company, Scale AI, has already entered into three contracts worth about $ 350 million or more, depending on government needs, to help the US Air Force and the military to make use of artificial intelligence, something quite impressive for a 25-year-old.

Scale technology analyzes satellite imagery much faster than humans to determine how much damage Russian bombs do to Ukraine. But it is not only useful for the army.

More than 300 companies, including General Motors and Flexport, use the Scale, which Wang founded when he was 19, to help them locate important information among a wealth of documents (millions of shipping documents or raw materials from motor cars). ).

“Every industry has huge amounts of data,” says Wang, who appeared on the Forbes Under 30 list in 2018. “Our goal is to help them unlock the dynamics of that data to help businesses take off the product they produce with the use of AI “.

A $ 325 million financing round last year valued Scale, which has an estimated revenue of $ 100 million, at $ 7.3 billion.

Wang’s estimated 15% stake is worth $ 1 billion, making him the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. The youngest is Pedro Franceschi, the 25-year-old Brazilian co-founder of the Brex credit card company.

“I told my parents it would just be something I would do for the summer. Obviously, I never went back to school.”