Alexandr Wang revisits a 2017 bet that his olympiad friends could be the next PayPal mafia
In a 9 November 2026 post, Alexandr WangDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, founder of Scale and Chief AI Officer at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, recalled a January 2017 lunch in San Francisco with Scott WuDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, when both were 19. They talked about how their International Mathematical Olympiad, International Olympiad in Informatics, and math-competition friends could become "the next paypal mafia," and that the group could take the tech world by storm.
Almost ten years later, Wang wrote that many friends from that time are "some of the most exciting people in AI and technology." The people he named, and their current roles, are:
- Scott WuDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, CEO and cofounder of Cognition
- Akshat BubnaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, cofounder and CTO of Modal
- Jeff YanDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, founder of HyperliquidDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →
- Jerry MaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, VP of Policy and Global Affairs at Perplexity
- Johnny HoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, cofounder and chief strategy officer of Perplexity
- Eugene ChenDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, founder of Ellipsis Labs
- Steven HaoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, cofounder of Cognition
- Jesse ZhangDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, CEO and cofounder of Decagon
- Vickie YeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, member of technical staff at Anthropic
- Alexander WeiDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, member of technical staff at OpenAI
- Demi GuoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, CEO and founder of Pika
- Daniel ZieglerDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, member of technical staff at Anthropic
- Hugh ZhangDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, member of technical staff at Anthropic
- Varun MohanDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, now at Google DeepMind after cofounding Windsurf
- Mark SellkeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, member of technical staff at OpenAI
Wang, Wu, and Eugene Chen were software engineers at Addepar in 2014, part of the cohort documented on Dealroom's Addepar mafia page. The wider group Wang listed is an olympiad and math-camp peer network, not a shared Addepar alumni list. He said he has known most of them since middle school through MATHCOUNTSDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Art of Problem SolvingDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, math and algorithm camps, and later internships. That network is now documented on Dealroom's Olympiad mafia page.
A public Dealroom list of companies founded by official IMO, IOI and IPhO medalists is here: Olympiad mafia: companies founded by IMO, IOI and IPhO medalistsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
Source: Alexandr Wang on X, 9 November 2026. Photo: Meta Platforms, via Wikimedia Commons.
