Meta AI head Alexandr Wang to American startups: Working for US government is not a matter of convenience, but basic principle

Meta AI head Alexandr Wang has called on American startups to treat serving the US government as a fundamental principle rather than a commercial convenience. Reacting to a post shared by Aakash Sabharwal, VP of engineering at Scale AI, Wang said: “Serving the US government should not be a commercial convenience, it must be a bedrock principle for startups.” Sabharwal, responding to a Forbes report on Chinese companies sourcing training data from Silicon Valley firms, warned that data companies working with the U.S. government should not also serve Chinese AI labs. “American companies should not be selling data to Chinese AI labs. @scale_AI doesn’t do this work, and we have turned down revenue because of it. The companies that do are undermining American AI leadership and risking national security,” he wrote.