Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post asking the Trump administration to increase investment in artificial intelligence.
Wang, who like many other tech CEOs attended Trump's inauguration on Monday, posted a copy of an ad on X that read "Dear President Trump: America must win the war on artificial intelligence."
In the full letter posted online, Wang explained that the United States should take five main steps to win what he sees as an "artificial intelligence war" against China.
Scale's core business is data labeling and processing for artificial intelligence projects in large organizations, and it was valued at $13.8 billion last year.
Wang hopes the U.S. government will follow the lead of tech giants and invest more in data and computing. He also suggested that the United States review its own regulations to ensure that there are a large number of AI-related jobs in the future.
Wang further called on federal agencies to be "AI ready" by 2027, launching an "aggressive" plan to provide cheap power for AI-centric data centers and providing guidance on how to implement some AI security measures. idea.
At least some of these proposals may benefit from scale, such as a surge in U.S. government spending on data. Scale already counts the U.S. government as a customer and is reportedly part of plans for a U.S. defense startup consortium.
Friendly regulations and incentives for AI-related jobs could also help Scale, as it relies heavily on contract workers, some of whom recently filed lawsuits claiming they were misclassified.
However, Wang sees the proposals as part of an effort to keep the United States ahead of China in artificial intelligence. "We are in a new technological arms race," he noted in the letter. "The Chinese government is investing in artificial intelligence at an unprecedented rate."
Chinese models like DeepSeek have gained attention for their strong performance on certain industry benchmarks. Wang's letter said China is now catching up with the United States after falling behind for at least a year, comments echoed by other AI leaders.
But Wang's description of the U.S.-China AI competition as a "war" has raised concerns among some.
"This is a terrible framework — we are not at war. We are all in this together, and if we let AI development become a war, we will probably all die." Former Twitch CEO, who briefly announced in 2023 said Emmett Shear, CEO of OpenAI.
It remains to be seen how the Trump administration responds. President Trump’s main action on artificial intelligence so far has been to rescind his predecessor’s executive order on artificial intelligence, which provided guidance to companies to help correct flaws and biases in their models.