· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I think the promise of this world that I'm describing, where every single person has this agency increase throughout their lifetime and they have the ability to accomplish their wants and their dreams, I think that world looks crazy in a very good way. I think it will be very interesting. It'll be artistic and cool, and you'll go into different pockets of the world, and it will be very diverse that it'll be kind of insane to think about what exactly that looks like, where literally billions of people have all of a sudden, because of abundant intelligence, the resources to make incredible things happen. I think that's part of the promise. I think in my head, it's almost like the "Rick and Morty" interdimensional cable but just somehow manifested into reality for humans. It could just be really awesome. [00:00:00] S0: So, I keep hearing this line from that show where it's like, "The universe eats smart people." Okay, so I want to go back. What I'm personally curious about is you founded Scale AI, you're running Scale AI, and then one day, Mark Zuckerberg reaches out and says, "Hey." I assume he says, "Hey, I want to talk." Can you tell me about this? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I think the exact message was something like, "Hey, do you have time for a call?" [00:00:00] S0: Did you have a relationship with Mark previously? Did you spend any time with him? What's the background there?
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Did you have a relationship with Mark previously? Did you spend any time with him? What's the background there? [00:00:00] S1: I have a friend, this guy, Alex Schultz, who I've known actually for many, many years, from when Scale was maybe a year old. I met him in San Francisco. He's currently the chief data officer at Meta, but was longtime Meta executive lieutenant. And he introduced me to Mark, I want to say in about, I think it was 2021 or 2022, to talk about AI, because I think at that time, Mark was getting a lot more interested in AI. Scale, we were doing a lot of stuff in AI. My memory is that I think it took one year to schedule that first meeting. From the intro to the meeting being scheduled, I think it was a full year. [00:00:00] S0: Why?
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Why? [00:00:00] S1: Mark obviously has an insane calendar and has a bajillion different things to deal with. And he's also very good at prioritization. He will spend a lot of time on the things that are really, really important, in some ways, too much time on the things that are really, really important. The only way he's able to do that and be a good dad and be a good partner and all this other stuff is to just ruthlessly prioritize. I had spoken to him a few times kind of after that and had gotten his advice as a founder to get advice from Mark Zuckerberg, obviously a really big deal. And I actually remember at that time, I would ask him a question on WhatsApp, and then he would write these really long responses, and I was really confused. I was like, "How does he have time to write these really long responses?" But now I realize he is just really fast and rigorous at writing. So, a lot of WhatsApp messages, he'll write a very rigorous, long response very quickly. It's a very impressive skill of his. [00:00:00] S0: Gives you a sneak peek into what's going on in his mind. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Fair.
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Fair. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, there's racing. Meta was an important customer of Scale, and I would say prior to this instance, maybe we spoke once every six months or so. Maybe that was the cadence of our interactions. And then, yeah, I think he had called, and I think it was actually not obvious at first what the endpoint was going to be, because the first conversation was just like, this was after Llama 4, and it was kind of just asking, "What do you think we should be doing?" [00:00:00] S0: Why is that an important point, that this conversation is happening after Llama 4? [00:00:00] S1: Llama 4 was not on the trajectory that Meta wanted as a company. It definitely was, I think, internally speaking, a disappointment. And it was also at a time where AI was clearly becoming just increasingly, increasingly important. It was clear that AI was going to be really critical to the future of Meta. So yeah, the first few conversations, we spoke on the phone, and he was just sort of asking for advice on, "What do you think we should be doing? What do you think we should be focused on?" [00:00:00] S0: This is what I've heard about him privately, that he has this insane... It's not a board of directors, like a Meta board, although there's some people on the board that he also does this with, but he's got this group of world-class entrepreneurs around him. And I've spoken to some of them, like, "You don't understand. He asks for advice constantly." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: He's hitting us up. He's like, "Here's what's going on in my life or in the work. What would you do?" And then he'll do that over and over and over again. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I think this is quite an impressive trait. [00:00:00] S0: Yes. [00:00:00] S1: Because it takes humility, obviously, to continue doing that even after all the incredible things that he's been able to accomplish. The whole timeline from when he first reached out to when we announced the deal was five, six weeks. It was pretty quick. [00:00:00] S0: Another thing that world-class entrepreneurs have in common. We had Jonathan Ross, the founder of Groq, on this podcast. The first time we ever spoke- Publicly about the 20 billion dollars deal he did with NVIDIA, was on the show. And he's like, "From the time first call from Jensen to the money's in my bank account was three weeks." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. That's amazing. I just had lots of ideas on what I'd be doing if I were in his shoes on how I would be thinking about Meta's AI strategy. One of the first things I said was what I said earlier, which is like, "Hey, I actually think because Meta is heritage-wise focused on things that people want to do is actually one of the most specially placed companies with this incredible shift to AI." I had lots and lots of ideas that I sort of sent his way, and then that was kind of this conversation happening in parallel with this like, "Oh, yeah, maybe we should potentially consider if there's a way to work together."
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. That's amazing. I just had lots of ideas on what I'd be doing if I were in his shoes on how I would be thinking about Meta's AI strategy. One of the first things I said was what I said earlier, which is like, "Hey, I actually think because Meta is heritage-wise focused on things that people want to do is actually one of the most specially placed companies with this incredible shift to AI." I had lots and lots of ideas that I sort of sent his way, and then that was kind of this conversation happening in parallel with this like, "Oh, yeah, maybe we should potentially consider if there's a way to work together." [00:00:00] S0: So when he says that, what do you think? Because this was not predictable to you. [00:00:00] S1: Not predictable, no. The whole thing was like a really crazy sequence. At the time, I was just like, "Oh, that's nice, but there's no way that-" [00:00:00] S0: But you know what that means when they say that, right? They want to buy you. It's always the same thing, but they say, it's like, "Oh, we got to find a way to work together." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I don't think I'd had that kind of coaching at the time. One thing that I explicitly felt at the time was like, yeah, it probably doesn't make that much sense even. I think I personally was like, "Yeah, maybe he's teasing it or throwing it out there, but does it even make that much sense?" [00:00:00] S0: Why wouldn't you think it makes sense? [00:00:00] S1: I mean, obviously, a deal ended up happening, so what do I know? But-