The Little-Known Startup That Has Surged Past Scale AI—Without Any Investors

After Meta Platforms’ Scale AI deal, data labeling is looking like Silicon Valley’s hot new interest. That’s an enormous opportunity for Edwin Chen's Surge AI.

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Art by Clark Miller

For years, data labeling existed in a tucked-away corner of Silicon Valley, a critical but unglamorous area of AI where companies like Google and OpenAI hire outside firms to improve their models by laboriously grading the quality of what they produce.

Now, a spotlight has unexpectedly fallen onto the field in the wake of Meta Platforms’ decision to pay $14.3 billion for 49% of Scale AI, the best-known data-labeling firm.

But it’s not the largest such firm. Nor perhaps the most impressive. That title belongs to Surge AI, founded by Edwin Chen.