Scale AI’s 28-Yr-Old Billionaire CEO Warns About This Chinese Startup – Casson Living – World News, Breaking News, International News

Scale AI’s 28-Yr-Old Billionaire CEO Warns About This Chinese Startup – Casson Living – World News, Breaking News, International News

Man in suit speaks into microphone
Alexandr Wang, one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Have you heard? The United States has held onto its lead in artificial intelligence over China for nearly a decade. However, Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old CEO of Scale AI—a startup valued at $13 billion—has recently voiced concerns about a significant new challenge. According to him, a groundbreaking A.I. model from the Chinese company DeepSeek, unveiled just before Christmas, is narrowing the competitive gap. Wang shared his insights during an interview with CNBC on January 23.

This week, DeepSeek introduced a second A.I. model that demonstrates reasoning abilities on par with top U.S. firms like OpenAI. The swift progress of this Chinese startup has not only captured the attention of researchers but has also ignited discussions regarding the effectiveness of A.I. chip export restrictions aimed at limiting China’s access to advanced GPUs essential for A.I. development.

Wang stated, “The A.I. race and the ongoing technological competition between the U.S. and China represent some of the most pressing issues we face today.” In a bold move, he published a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, urging the Trump administration to maintain America’s technological superiority amid China’s rapid advancements in A.I. He advocated for enhanced investments in computing resources and data infrastructure, alongside a robust energy strategy to bolster the A.I. sector.

A self-made billionaire hailing from Los Alamos, New Mexico, Wang was raised by parents who worked as physicists at the esteemed Los Alamos National Laboratory. After brief experiences at Addepar and Quora, he ventured into technology, diving deep into machine learning at MIT before founding Scale AI. The company focuses on delivering meticulously annotated data for A.I. training through contractual engagements.

With a staggering valuation of $13.8 billion and a clientele that includes the U.S. Department of Defense and OpenAI, Scale AI has carved out a significant niche in the A.I. ecosystem. Wang’s strong relationship with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with whom he shared living quarters during the Covid-19 pandemic, has been instrumental in Scale AI’s expansion. The company was incubated at Y Combinator, the renowned startup accelerator once helmed by Altman.

How does DeepSeek’s latest model compare to top U.S. offerings?

Recently, Scale AI joined forces with the Center for A.I. Safety to launch “Humanity’s Last Exam,” which is being dubbed the most challenging benchmark test for A.I. systems to date. While previous models have struggled to achieve a success rate exceeding 10% on this test, DeepSeek’s new reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1, has emerged as a strong contender. Wang informed CNBC that its performance closely matches that of leading American models.

Despite strict GPU export regulations imposed on China, DeepSeek claims to have achieved impressive results using significantly fewer resources than their American rivals. For example, DeepSeek-V3, launched in December, was trained on about 2,000 Nvidia A.I. chips, whereas Meta’s Llama 3.1 model required 16,000 GPUs for its training.

Wang remains wary, suggesting that Chinese laboratories may possess more H100s—a specific type of Nvidia GPU not legally accessible in China—than is publicly acknowledged. He hinted that DeepSeek may have access to around 50,000 H100s, a claim they cannot fully disclose due to U.S. export regulations.

To drive the development of cutting-edge A.I. models forward, Wang emphasized the necessity for enhanced computational capabilities and infrastructure in the U.S. He anticipates that the A.I. market could balloon to a staggering $1 trillion once A.I. achieves artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.), a milestone he believes may be reached within the next two to four years. A.G.I. refers to systems that can operate as exceptionally skilled remote workers—a vision Wang sees as imminent.

Scale AI’s 28-Year-Old Billionaire CEO Warns About This Scarily Good Chinese Startup