Surge AI

How it works

Surge AI is a San Francisco data labelling and RLHF company founded in 2020 by Edwin Chen, previously at Google, Facebook and Twitter. It sells human training and evaluation data to AI labs; Reuters reported in July 2025 that it had passed $1 billion in revenue the previous year, had been bootstrapped and profitable, and counted Google, OpenAI and Anthropic among its clients. Forbes later reported that OpenAI no longer works with Surge.

If you are looking for Surge AI jobs as an annotator or AI trainer, the general work comes through DataAnnotation rather than a Surge-branded sign-up. Surge says so itself: its own consultant network page tells applicants that Surge will manage their application and projects "through our platform, DataAnnotation". Forbes reported in September 2025 that Surge hires annotators through a wholly owned affiliate called DataAnnotation Tech, and that neither the job listings nor the annotator website names Surge; Business Insider reported in December 2025 that Surge runs DataAnnotation.tech. In a 2025 lawsuit the defendant is named as Surge Labs, Inc. doing business as DataAnnotation. Earlier reporting, in 2023, could only say Surge appeared to own the brand, and Surge would not confirm it then.

Surge also recruits specialists directly. Its consultant network covers finance, accounting, healthcare operations and coding, and its careers page lists part-time consultant roles in accounting, finance, healthcare and law. Even those applicants are routed into DataAnnotation for the assessment and the projects.

Worth knowing

Good:

• The consultant network advertises a payment just for submitting an application and a further bonus if you are accepted, which is unusual in a market where screening is almost always unpaid
• Surge is, by the revenue figures Reuters and Forbes reported, one of the largest companies in this market, and profitable
• Forbes reported pay of at least $20 an hour on the platform, rising past $40 for specialised tasks

Less good:

• The branding split means much of what you read about "Surge AI jobs" is really about DataAnnotation, and the annotator site does not make the connection obvious
• In May 2025 a proposed class action, Cavalier v. Surge Labs, was filed in San Francisco Superior Court alleging that annotators were misclassified as contractors and not paid for time spent on training, qualification exams and assessments. These are allegations, not findings; Chen told Forbes the suit was without merit, and we found no ruling or settlement
• The Globe and Mail reported in 2023 that the platform had been criticised over unexplained annotator account cancellations and a lack of transparency about ownership

About this page

Facts above come from Surge's own consultant network and careers pages, checked 29 September 2026, and from Reuters (July 2025), Forbes (September 2025), Business Insider (December 2025) and the Cavalier complaint as filed by Clarkson Law Firm. Surge publishes no payment method, payout schedule or country list for its annotators under its own name, so those fields are empty here; the rate its consultant page advertises applies only to that specialist programme, so we have not put it in the typical-pay field. We found no reputable confirmation that Surge's reported 2025 fundraising closed, so no valuation is given.

For AI training roles you can apply to directly on this site, see software and IT roles and business and finance roles.