The person set to turn into one of many world’s youngest synthetic intelligence billionaires began his entrepreneurial journey as a bored preteen dwelling in Los Angeles.
When Ali Ansari was 12, dwelling along with his household in a single room at his aunt’s home in Woodland Hills, his immigrant mom instructed him to cease losing time watching his telephone and check out creating wealth with it.
He took his father’s loafers and listed them on eBay for $50.
“My dad was like, ‘Why the hell did you promote my footwear?’ ” Ansari mentioned. “My mother was like, excited.”
Whereas it was a foul deal for his dad, Ansari discovered the fun of creating wealth. He has been chasing it ever since.
He began biking round his neighborhood, visiting storage gross sales and thrift shops, shopping for no matter he might carry to promote on-line.
Via center faculty, highschool, and school in California, he continued to construct on-line companies, launching an AI enterprise in his 20s that might make him a billionaire this yr, his twenty fifth.
Ali Ansari generates the coaching knowledge that makes AI fashions like ChatGPT and Claude smarter.
(Paul Kuroda/For The Occasions)
His onerous hustle in his younger years is paying off greater than he might have imagined. The success has given him the liberty to purchase his dad and mom a home and a pleasant automobile. He has been featured within the information and will get acknowledged by individuals within the enterprise.
However the principle change from his success thus far, he says, is a large improve within the quantity of labor and duty he has to shoulder.
“I really feel very grateful and really harassed,” he mentioned. “That form of summarizes it.”
Ansari’s AI firm known as Micro1. Making AI smarter requires huge quantities of knowledge, in addition to coaching and testing. Micro1 recruits and manages hundreds of human consultants — coders, legal professionals, medical doctors, professors and monetary analysts — to assemble knowledgeable info that’s fed to AI fashions like ChatGPT. These consultants overview and proper the AI’s output, making it extra correct.
Micro1 is without doubt one of the key suppliers of that form of knowledgeable human help for AI, alongside California rivals Scale AI, Surge and Mercor.
Micro1 went from $4 million in annualized income in 2024 to $200 million right this moment, in keeping with Ansari. Even by Silicon Valley requirements, that’s a meteoric rise.
Forbes estimates that Ansari is on the verge of changing into a billionaire, primarily based on ongoing funding conversations that worth Micro1 at $2.5 billion. Micro1 was final valued at $500 million.
Ansari has a booming voice, a trendy buzz lower and a meticulously maintained beard. He’s quick along with his fingers, often responding instantly to textual content regardless of all he’s juggling. He has the arrogance of somebody older, although his frequent use of the phrase “like” in dialog marks him as Gen Z.
His startup relies in Palo Alto and through month-to-month visits to Los Angeles, he works out of a coworking house in Woodland Hills — minutes away from his household, highschool and the reminiscences of his many teenage aspect hustles.
Ali Ansari is the cofounder of Micro1, an organization that recruits and manages hundreds of human consultants to assist prepare AI.
(Paul Kuroda/For The Occasions)
“This space is my total childhood,” he mentioned, gesturing out the window from his Woodland Hills workplace throughout an interview on the coworking house.
Ansari’s household emigrated to the U.S. when he was 10, after successful the uncommon U.S. inexperienced card lottery. Earlier than the transfer, that they had a cushty life in a small seashore city in northern Iran, the place his father owned a kitchen cupboard manufacturing unit.
Because the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran has witnessed a number of waves of middle-class exodus, the place Iranian immigrants moved to the united statesto escape financial collapse and persecution. The rising presence of the Persian diaspora in Westwood earned it the moniker Tehrangeles.
The household of 4 shared a single room at a relative’s home for the primary yr. His mom took a job at Goal. The transition was tough for Ansari, who wasn’t fluent in English and sometimes acquired in hassle for playing around at school.
“Academics would name my mother, they usually’d be like, ‘Hey, your son’s making like, cow noises once more’ or one thing,” he mentioned.
At 14, he began reselling textbooks as a result of they have been simpler to hold in his backpack. He found out that procuring a gentle provide of books by storage gross sales was onerous, so he developed Cash Books Now, a web site for faculty college students to promote their textbooks. He would checklist them on Amazon at a 50% markup.
Shopping for and promoting textbooks turned his obsession. His bed room wall was divided into two sections: “not listed” and “listed” to trace stock. By 16, Ansari had bought greater than $100,000 in books.
“I’d deal with this far more than faculty,” he mentioned. “It was like the principle hustle.”
In highschool, he began a tutoring enterprise that he later bought. In 2019, Ansari enrolled at UC Berkeley and began a software program company to construct web sites for small companies.
Recruiting engineers to construct the web sites was taking over an excessive amount of of his time, so he constructed an AI screening device to assist him with interviews. This later turned Micro1, and his screening device was used to trace down, weed out and take a look at all types of consultants for coaching AI.
Nonetheless, the street to success was not with out its tough patches. After elevating $2 million in 2023, Ansari had a panic assault throughout a visit to go to his workforce in India.
“I saved form of repeating this concept in my head, which was, like, some individuals have determined to provide me thousands and thousands of {dollars},” he mentioned. “And now I’ve this obligation to essentially do one thing good with it.”
He acquired by it with the assistance of his household and studying, and has matured sufficient now to handle nervousness and lead with confidence.
“I’m extra composed than ever, and I frankly really feel much less anxious than ever,” he mentioned.
Micro1’s annualized revenues surged greater than 30-fold final yr to $150 million. In early 2026, it crossed $200 million.
It has constructed a worldwide workforce of contractors with varied abilities: from coders and comedians, to medical doctors and legal professionals, to show their abilities to AI.
Ansari says main such a fast-growing firm on the coronary heart of the most well liked tech sector seems like being in a continuing battle making an attempt to satisfy demand, elevate cash and “punch again” towards rivals making an attempt to poach his staff.
He says he doesn’t have any hobbies apart from work. He doesn’t watch tv or films however he devours enterprise podcasts and private tales of entrepreneurs equivalent to Elon Musk.
Ansari continues to be adapting to the newfound fame and tasks. As the corporate’s valuation has climbed, Ansari purchased his household a home in Woodland Hills. He lately employed a chief of employees to assist with household {and professional} issues.
“I’m always selecting what I spend my time on, and it’s turn into probably the most troublesome factor,” he mentioned.
For future progress, Ansari is betting that demand for human coaching knowledge will develop. He lately expanded Micro1 into robotics, recruiting roughly 1,000 individuals throughout 60 international locations to file footage of themselves performing family duties. The footage might be used to coach robotic techniques.
Ansari predicts that in the long term, human knowledge will turn into a $1-trillion market — a projection he derives from the idea that roughly 5% of all human labor will finally be redirected towards coaching AI techniques.
On a current go to house, his father instructed him he ought to diversify into robots. When Ansari instructed him Micro1 had already began doing that, his father complained.
The person whose idler launched an empire wished a chunk of the motion this time.
“You stole my thought,” his father mentioned. “You bought to provide me fairness.”
The younger Ansari hopes his success will uplift extra than simply his household.
“I would [become] the youngest Persian billionaire on the planet,” he mentioned. “I feel I’ll encourage quite a lot of different Iranians, which form of feels bizarre to say.”
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