These A.I. Dreamers Don’t Fit the Stereotype

Marshall Kools shares an apartment in NoPa with two roommates, sleeps in a nook beneath the stairs, owns only a Giorgio Armani dress shirt and plays Sade’s "Love Deluxe" on repeat. At 24, he co-founded a start-up that aims to use A.I. to streamline white-collar administrative work — and, in the process, may eliminate some jobs.

The city hums with talk of A.I. and the boom has produced outsized payouts. Matt Deitke was hired last year on a four‑year $250 million contract to work at the Meta Superintelligence Lab, part of a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI; other rising figures include Alexandr Wang and Ruoming Pang.

"It’s a cowboy era," Mr. Kools said. He and his partner William Alexander are scraping by on low five‑figure salaries — "I probably paid myself about $10,000 last year," Mr. Kools said — while Mr. Alexander cautions, "Statistically, there is a very good chance this will not work." Founders are everywhere.

a.i, startup, scale ai, meta, superintelligence lab, matt deitke, alexandr wang, ruoming pang, marshall kools, administrative work