Alexandr Wang became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at 24. Now, at 28, he is running one of the most ambitious AI projects in Silicon Valley. In his first 60 days at Meta, Wang built a 100-person AI lab. He said it is “smaller and more talent dense than any of the other labs”. He explained this to TBPN hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hayes.

Wang’s main goal is to create superintelligent AI. He advises kids, especially 13-year-olds from Gen Alpha, to skip gaming, sports, or normal hobbies and instead focus all their time on “vibe coding”. Wang believes almost all code written today, including his own, will be replaced by AI in five years. This idea has made him “radicalized by AI coding”, as reported by Fortune.

Alexandr Wang AI lab

For Wang, what matters now is experimenting with AI tools, not learning a specific programming language or syntax. Spending thousands of hours with AI tools gives a huge advantage. Teenagers have an advantage because they have more free time to explore new technology. Wang says that instead of running small businesses or gaming, kids should focus on coding.

He compares the current moment to the early days of the PC revolution. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg gained an advantage by playing with early machines, and Wang believes the same is happening now with AI. Wang says Meta has unmatched infrastructure, scale, and product distribution. “We have the business model to support building literally hundreds of billions of dollars of compute”, as stated by Fortune report.

His lab, though smaller than competitors, is more skilled. Other labs may be 10 times bigger, but Wang says his lab “cracked” the coding problem. The lab works in three areas: research builds AI models aiming for superintelligence, product ensures these reach billions of users, and infrastructure manages the largest data centers.

Vibe coding for kids

Wang is excited about hardware like Meta’s smart glasses. He says they are the “natural delivery mechanism for superintelligence” because they place AI next to human senses, giving a cognitive boost. Vibe coding means using natural language prompts to generate AI-powered code instead of writing complicated syntax manually, as per the report.

Many companies are using vibe coding now. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said it allows testing ideas in 20 minutes instead of weeks, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed AI now creates over 30% of new code at Google. Wang says vibe coding is not just for productivity. It is about building intuition by experimenting with AI tools, which is why kids should start early. “The role of an engineer is just very different now than it was before”, as per the report by Fortune.

FAQs

Q1. Why does Wang want kids to start vibe coding early?
He believes early experience with AI tools builds skills and intuition for the future tech economy.

Q2. What is vibe coding according to Alexandr Wang?
Vibe coding is using AI and natural language to create code instead of writing it manually.