Meta AI Director Alexandr Wang: Why I Created Muse

Meta's Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang, recently published an open letter outlining the core philosophy behind his leadership in building the Muse AI assistant—to empower every ordinary person to achieve their dreams. This letter, appearing alongside Muse's strong market performance, further solidifies external assessments of the $14 billion acquisition value.

Muse has seen explosive growth since its launch. According to Sensor Tower data, the app accumulated 2.8 million downloads in its first 12 days on the US and Canadian App Stores, surpassing ChatGPT's 1.3 million downloads during the same period, and setting a US record of 264,000 downloads in a single day on September 19th. Boosted by this, Meta's market capitalization has increased by approximately $234 billion over the past five trading days.

In his open letter, Wang wrote that most people never say what they truly want—not because they lack desire, but because dreams often quietly die amidst the tedious obstacles of reality. He positions Muse as everyone's "second brain," an "all-around manager" capable of understanding half a sentence, helping people make plans, sending emails, finding funding, and clearing obstacles.

An open letter about "desire"

In his letter, Wang described the predicament of human dreams with an almost literary touch: "Every unfulfilled desire is a silent tragedy of human potential." He wrote that the world has long been shaped by a few "enthusiasts who somehow turn desires into reality," and Muse's mission is to enable each of the 8 billion people to truly unlock their agency.

In his vision, Muse is not a wish-granting fairy, but a pragmatic executor—"Let me tell you, this is what you've always dreamed of, let's make it happen, here's how," and then put it into action.

The letter was released shortly after the Meta Connect 2026 conference. At that conference, Meta launched a range of hardware products, including the Muse Charm—a standalone pocket device designed for voice interaction, the Meta VR glasses weighing only 100 grams and priced at $1,299, and the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 smart glasses starting at $249.

From Scale AI to Meta: The Return of a Controversial Acquisition

The way Wang joined Meta was quite dramatic. In 2025, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg acquired the entire workforce of the popular AI startup Scale AI for $14.3 billion. As the founder of Scale AI, Wang reportedly received approximately $5 billion personally. This deal was considered an astronomical sum by some market analysts at the time.

Wang is the co-founder of Scale AI, a company that focuses on providing data labeling services for AI model training and was once one of the highest-valued AI infrastructure companies in Silicon Valley. After Meta acquired Scale AI in 2025, Wang became Meta's Chief AI Officer, leading the company's AI product strategy.

Technology investor Adam Khoo wrote on the X platform:

"At the time, people thought Zuckerberg was crazy to spend $5 billion to hire Alexandr Wang. Today, Meta's new AI products, developed under Wang's leadership, have added approximately $200 billion to the company's market value. Suddenly, spending heavily to lock in top talent doesn't seem so insane anymore."

This acquisition also has profound strategic significance. The deal effectively reversed the outside world's perception of Meta as lagging behind in the field of AI, transforming it from a "follower" to a "leader".

Camouflage T-shirts and the $30 dressing philosophy

If Muse is Wang's expression at the product level, then his attire on the Meta Connect 2026 stage unexpectedly became another form of personal symbolism.

Wang wore a 1990s-style camouflage T-shirt with a deer head print, paired with camouflage Crocs and black trousers for his speech. After the press conference, his outfit quickly sparked heated discussions on the X platform, with some users speculating that the T-shirt was an $800 Hermès item.

Wang immediately came forward to "clarify," stating that the shirt came from a secondhand store in Santa Cruz and cost him $30, the Crocs about $60, and the Calvin Klein underwear $5. He characterized the outside speculation about luxury goods as "defamation."

According to Business Insider, this is not the first time Wang has appeared in a similar deer/camouflage style—he has worn similar outfits in previous Core Memory interviews and important internal meetings. This "anti-elite" style of dress is highly consistent with his online persona on the X platform, where he calls himself a "tweet bombardment" and continuously bombards Muse with emojis. Some observers also see it as a brand image he intentionally builds: removing the glamour of corporate elites while retaining the chaotic energy of a founder.

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