Also known as “vibe-coding,” the method allows programmers to create code by describing ideas or commands to AI, instead of writing traditional lines of code.
The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy, former Tesla AI lead and OpenAI cofounder, who defines it as “fully giving in to the vibes, embracing exponentials, and forgetting that the code even exists.” It represents a shift to programming using natural languages like English.
“If you are 13 years old, you should spend all of your time vibe-coding. That’s how you should live your life,” Wang recently said on the TBPN podcast, as quoted by Fortune.
Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, arrives for a meeting with international investors in IA at the Elysee Palace as part of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris, France, February 10, 2025. Photo by Reuters
In Wang’s view, the mindset behind the trend is akin to the “be there early, go deep” stage that famous tech founders such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have experienced.
“When personal computers first came about, the people who spent the most time with it and grew up with it had this immense advantage in the future economy—like the Bill Gates, even the Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world,” he said. “I think that moment is happening right now.”
Gates himself has recalled sneaking out of his parents’ house as a teenager to spend hours coding, taking advantage of the free computer access that was given to him by a local Seattle company, according to CNBC.
Wang, who was named the world’s youngest self-made billionaire by Forbes earlier this year, built a fortune estimated at US$3.2 billion largely through Scale AI, a startup he co-founded at age 19 with Lucy Guo, who is now the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire. In June, Meta poached Wang to serve as its chief AI officer in a deal that valued Scale at $29 billion.
But even with that level of success, Wang believes AI will match his coding ability within the next five years.
His perspective reflects a broader trend as industry leaders are also experimenting with vibe-coding to accelerate their own projects. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has noted that AI-driven programming now allows him to produce prototypes in 20 minutes, a task that once took weeks.
At Google, internal AI coding tools are being tested, and CEO Sundar Pichai recently said he himself had used tools like Cursor and Replit to quickly establish a custom webpage, per Business Insider.
Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has remarked that everyone is a programmer now, as they can build digital products simply by describing them in plain English.
But as product managers, artists, and even high-schoolers can bring ideas to life faster than ever, some experts warn that vibe-coding has its risks.
Nigel Douglas, head of developer relations at Cloudsmith, told the Financial Times that while it might just result in a messy interface when personally used to create apps, it can lead to serious problems in a business context.
“The wrong tool can do real damage and result in data breaches, service outages, or a compromised software supply chain,” he said.
Wang and other industry players also emphasize that learning programming fundamentals remains valuable, especially when combined with AI tools that can enhance those skills.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke said at this year’s VivaTech in Paris that non-technical founders would struggle to grow a startup without developers and vibe-coding alone lacks the depth needed for major investment.
Regardless, Wang remains bullish on AI coding and believes teens can gain a competitive edge by experimenting with these tools.
“It’s actually, in some ways, this incredible moment of discontinuity where, if you just happen to spend, like, 10,000 hours playing with the tools and figuring out how to use them better than other people, that’s a huge advantage.”