Challenging major corporations has never been simpler, according to Alexandr Wang.

During a presentation at a Y Combinator gathering, the founder of Scale AI, currently directing Meta's Superintelligence Labs, noted that artificial intelligence has revolutionized the startup landscape.

"It is probably a once in a civilization opportunity to be a dreamer and to have a vision and to have ambition and to impose a view of how the future world should look by building something amazing," Wang said in a video from the event released on Wednesday.

He explained that conditions were tougher when he launched his AI training company in 2016. Scale AI ranks among the first data labeling firms - it compensates thousands of contractors worldwide to filter, rank, and train AI responses for the largest AI labs. Wang, who served as CEO, departed Scale to join Meta last June as part of a $14.3 billion agreement the social media company reached with his startup.

"It was like David versus Goliath. You had to be clever, and you had to find an angle into the market and figure out a way to compete even though you had much fewer resources," Wang said. "Now I actually think with the power of agents and AI broadly speaking it is much closer to Goliath versus Goliath."

He added that if a startup adopts AI agents in the most ambitious ways, it can readily outperform incumbent companies. AI agents are software systems that can self-complete multi-step tasks such as writing code or handling customer support.

Wang's remarks on this being a generational moment to start a business align closely with views from Silicon Valley's leading figures on the topic.

At the same YC event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman repeated his position on AI's promise for startups.

"I think we will go through a very steep period, which again, never a better time to do a startup than right now," Altman said. "I hope we can say that again every year from now on, but it is certainly true about this moment in history."

Prominent tech investor Vinod Khosla forecasted that AI will spark a small-business surge because entrepreneurs can delegate tasks like legal and accounting work to AI.

"I would guess by 2035, 10 years from now, that is a very short time, we will have 1/4 the number of corporate employees, maybe less, and we will have 50 million micro entrepreneurs doing their thing, being their own boss," he said on a May podcast.