Alexandr Wang: The Next Bill Gates Is a 13-Year-Old ‘Vibe Coder’

At just twenty-eight years old, Alexandr Wang leads one of the most ambitious artificial intelligence initiatives in Silicon Valley. Having become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at twenty-four, Wang now directs a highly specialized team at Meta, which he describes as smaller and more talent-dense than any competing lab. His ultimate objective is nothing short of achieving superintelligence.

Wang believes we are living through a pivotal moment in technological history, one that demands a new approach to learning and creating. He argues that young people, especially those in their early teens, should devote their time not to conventional hobbies but to what he calls “vibe coding.” This means immersing themselves in AI-powered tools, experimenting freely, and learning to guide intelligent systems rather than memorizing programming syntax.

According to Wang, every line of code written today will likely be obsolete within five years. What matters now is not mastering a specific language, but developing an intuitive feel for how AI thinks and operates. He compares the current shift to the early days of personal computing, when pioneers like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg gained an enormous advantage simply by growing up alongside groundbreaking technology.

Wang sees this as a unique window of opportunity. Teenagers, with their abundant free time and adaptability, are perfectly positioned to build deep fluency with emerging tools. He encourages them to spend thousands of hours exploring AI systems, arguing that this hands-on experience will provide a significant edge in the future economy.

At Meta, Wang’s compact team of just over one hundred people is structured around three core pillars: research, product, and infrastructure. The research division focuses on developing models that Wang believes will eventually achieve superintelligence. The product team works on integrating these advances across Meta’s platforms, reaching billions of users. Infrastructure, meanwhile, is tasked with building what Wang describes as the largest data centers in the world.

He is especially enthusiastic about hardware, particularly Meta’s smart glasses, which he views as a natural vehicle for superintelligence. By placing AI directly within the user’s field of perception, these devices could effectively merge digital intelligence with human cognition, offering what feels like a genuine cognitive enhancement.

The concept of vibe coding is central to Wang’s vision. It refers to using natural language to instruct AI systems to write and refine code, bypassing traditional programming methods. This approach is already gaining traction among industry leaders. Klarna’s CEO has noted that AI allows him to test ideas in minutes rather than weeks, and Google’s Sundar Pichai has stated that over thirty percent of new code at the company is now AI-generated.

For Wang, however, vibe coding is more than a productivity tool, it’s a fundamental shift in how we relate to technology. He urges the next generation to begin experimenting early, building intuition through repeated interaction with AI. In his view, the role of the engineer has transformed. It’s no longer about writing perfect code, but about learning to collaborate with machines that can write it for you.

(Source: Fortune)