Wang: Scale AI originally started as a medical care AI agent
Alexandr Wang · Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity” · Y Combinator · Jul 29, 2026 · at 3:35
Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang tells YC President Garry Tan about the company's origin story during their time in Y Combinator.
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“We wanted to build like, an AI agent, funnily enough, for doc, for, to help people, like, get medical care. And it was, like, the writing, it was a great example of an idea that I think will ultimately exist. Like, I think we're even seeing it now. Like, AI agents to help people get medical care are very real, but it was the wrong timing. And we worked on it for about a month or two before Jared pulled us aside and we're like, Guys, this is, I don't know if this is going to go anywhere. And that's exactly what we needed to hear, and it was at that time when, like, you know, I had studied AI at MIT, I had, like, trained models, and we thought, we sort of went back to the drawing board, thought deeply about where the opportunity was, and came up with scale.”
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