Surge AI
Supplies high-end human data to AI labs, and was profitable before its first outside raise.
- Revenue
- About $1.2B in 2024 (Sacra estimate)
- Value
- Talks at $25B reported by Bloomberg in 2025. No closed 2026 round found
- Growth
- Revenue driven mainly by about 12 frontier AI labs (Sacra estimate for 2024)
- Based in
- San Francisco, US
- Listed
- Private
One analysis calls Anthropic its main labelling partner, and Surge gained work as Scale lost some clients.
Nearly all revenue comes from a small group of frontier labs, and the 2025 fundraising outcome is not confirmed.
Money coming in
Who pays Surge AI, and for what.
Main human data partner, according to one analysis
sacra.com
Money going out
Who Surge AI pays to do what it does.
No suppliers of Surge AI mapped yet.
Where it sits on the map
Competitors and neighbours
Pays vetted experts to write, grade and check the training data that AI labs buy.
About $2B gross annualised run rate in June 2026, reported by The Information. Gross means before contractor pay, which Sacra says is 60 to 70 percent of it
Open profileLabels and grades training data and runs human evaluations for AI labs and big companies.
Meta paid $14.3B for 49%
Open profileListed data company that collects and labels AI training data, with a fast-growing China business.
Group revenue A$119.9M in the half year to June 2026 (ASX filing)
Open profileA student and graduate jobs network that now supplies expert contractors to train AI models.
About $1.1B annualised gross revenue in April 2026 (Sacra estimate). Net revenue about $450M after contractor pay
Open profileRuns human feedback and training data operations for frontier labs and large enterprises.
$134M in 2024, company figure reported by Sacra
Open profileSells data labelling software and a data service for building AI training sets.
About $50M in 2024 (Latka estimate)
Open profileSupplies vetted domain experts, such as PhDs and senior engineers, to AI labs for training data.
More than $100M annual recurring revenue by December 2025 (TechCrunch). Sacra estimates about $500M annualised in August 2026 (estimate)
Open profileBuilds finished training datasets and simulated environments for AI labs, enterprises and the US government.
Annualised run rate above $350M, company figure in September 2026. Implicator reports $375M
Open profileSupplies coding and engineering experts who train, test and check AI models for labs.
About $300M annual recurring revenue at its March 2025 round (TechCrunch)
Open profileSources: sacra.com, news.bloomberglaw.com, sacra.com
The map updates three times a week.
241 companies across 25 areas, 62 money flows and 89 openings so far. New research lands every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Back to the full mapFree daily email
Get the map updates in your inbox
A short read every morning on what is moving in AI, including new areas of the map as they go live. Free.
You are in
Your first AI Pulse lands tomorrow morning. Keep an eye on your inbox.