2017 chat resurfaces: 19-year-old Alexandr Wang and Scott Wu predicted an olympiad 'PayPal Mafia'
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-11-10
In 2017, 19-year-old Alexandr Wang (Scale AI) and Scott Wu (Cognition) discussed over dinner whether their IMO/IOI/math olympiad friends could become the next 'PayPal Mafia.' A Discord screenshot from the era shows Wu calling it 'a crazy idea' before admitting he loves it. A decade later, many of those competition kids now lead frontier AI companies — proof that talent networks form years before the companies do.
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