Artificial intelligence is no longer the technology of the future — it’s the reality of today. And among the founders of this reality, young people who are only 16 or 18 years old are increasingly taking their place. Once upon a time, it was thought that years of experience, academic degrees, and corporate ranks were needed to enter the tech giants. Now, young people who have an idea, code it, and make it a reality are changing this reality.
A post by Notion co-founder Ivan Zhao yesterday clearly demonstrated this. He noted that last month, an 18-year-old and last week, a 16-year-old joined Notion’s AI team. “The next generation of AI is not waiting for permission to shape it — they are already building it,” Zhao writes. This is not just an exception, but a new trend that is already taking shape.
At the same time, one of the events that caused a lot of noise in the world of AI was Meta’s $250 million job offer to 24-year-old engineer Matt Deitke. Deitke initially rejected the $125 million offer, but after a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, he accepted a double offer. This incident shows that the main criterion for technology giants is no longer age, but potential and skills.
Other examples reinforce this picture. Aidan Gomez, despite being 28 years old, is already one of the leaders in the field of artificial intelligence with his startup Cohere, as one of the co-founders of Transformer Architecture.
Alexandr Wang, 27, runs the startup Scale AI, and many agencies, including the US Department of Defense, use his services. Meta paid $14.3 billion to acquire a 49% stake in the startup Scale AI.
Names like Demi Guo and Ethan Perez are also leading world-class projects in the fields of generative AI and safe artificial intelligence at a young age.
All these examples confirm the same truth: the new generation is no longer passive observers in the field of artificial intelligence. They have become a formative force in this technology. The future is already in their hands. And they don't just dream about this future — they code it, test it, and deploy it.
