Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang has published an open letter lobbying Trump to invest in AI

Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, has taken out a full-page ad in The Washington Post asking the Trump administration to invest more in AI.

Wang, who attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday like many other tech CEOs, posted a copy of the ad on X, which reads “Dear President Trump: America must win the AI War.”

In the full letter published online, Wang explains that the US should take five broad steps to win what he considers an “AI war” against China. 

Scale, whose core business is data labeling and processing for AI projects at large organizations, was valued at $13.8 billion last year.

Wang wants the U.S. government to emulate tech giants by spending more on data and compute. He also recommends the U.S. review its own regulations to ensure there’s plenty of AI-related jobs in the future.

Wang further calls for making federal agencies “AI-ready” by 2027, launching an “aggressive” plan for cheap electricity that can be consumed by AI-centric data centers, and offered ideas on how to implement some AI safety measures.

Scale could benefit from at least some of these recommendations, like 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.

More friendly regulations and encouraging AI-related jobs could help Scale as well, as it relies heavily on contract workers, a few of whom have recently filed lawsuits alleging they are misclassified.

Wang, however, has framed the recommendations as part of an effort to keep the U.S. ahead of China in AI. “We are in a new kind of technological arms race,” his letter states. “The Chinese government is investing in AI at an unprecedented pace.”

Chinese models like DeepSeek have been getting attention for their strong performance on certain industry benchmarks. Wang’s letter says China is now catching up to the U.S. after being at least a year behind, comments echoed by other AI leaders. 

But Wang’s framing of US-China AI competition as a “war” has raised concern from some. 

“This is a horrible framing – we are not at war. We are all in this together and if we make AI development into a war we are likely to all die,” posted Emmett Shear, the ex-Twitch CEO who was briefly OpenAI’s CEO in 2023.

How the Trump administration responds remains to be seen. So far, President Trump’s main action on AI has been to revoke his predecessor’s Executive Order on AI, which created guidance for companies to help correct flaws and biases in their models. 

Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news