Companies / Data vendor
Surge AI
Surge AI supplies human-generated data and reinforcement learning environments for training AI models, with the stated mission to "raise AGI with the richness of humanity". Recorded here: what it sells, in its own words, 2 funding events, 1 revenue figure and 4 public prices.
San Francisco, California, USFounded 2020surgehq.aiLatest record 15 Oct 2026
What Surge AI sells
In its own words, read on its own site 15 Oct 2026. On the vendor register
- What it sells
RL environments: “We create rich, complex RL environments that challenge agentic models in novel ways, and design verifiers that reward their behavior.” surgehq.ai
Datasets: “Our off-the-shelf datasets are the same: thousands of hours of expert reasoning, pre-built and ready to use today, spanning RL environments, coding, and the core capabilities every model needs.” surgehq.ai
Expert and human data: “We bootstrap model capabilities through demonstrations: teaching them to use computers, navigate the web, and reason for the first time.” surgehq.ai
Evaluations and benchmarks: “Test models and AI systems against custom benchmarks and evaluation sets before they reach customers.” surgehq.ai
- Where its data comes from
Made by experts and contractors: “Training data, evals, and RL environments built by the same experts behind our frontier-lab work.” surgehq.ai
- Buys data from owners
- Its pages do not say it does.
- Areas its pages name
- Coding, Business work, Finance, Legal, Medical, Science, Images and video, Speech and audio, Languages
Public prices involving Surge AI
- Surge AI expert contractor (award-winning author or journalist tier)
The only rate on Surge's own workforce page, shown above an award-winning author journalist profile; other profiles (constitutional lawyer, investment banker, professor) carry no rate.
The payer's own page, Surge AI, Workforce page
$200-400 / hour, contractorper hour (paid to the worker)
- Google's annual contract with Surge AI
Forbes (September 2025) via Contrary.
Press report, Contrary Research, Surge AI memo (updated 1 September 2026)
more than $100 million per yearper year
- Meta's 2024 spend with Surge AI
Contrary attributes the figure to The Information. One lab's annual human-data bill with one vendor.
Press report, Contrary Research, Surge AI memo (updated 1 September 2026)
$150 million in 2024per year
- Surge AI's prices relative to competing human-data vendors
Forbes (September 2025) via Contrary; Surge's DataAnnotation pays $25-$50/hr generalists and $40-$150+/hr specialists, so the spread there is widest.
Press report, Contrary Research, Surge AI memo
50% to ten times more than competitorsrelative to competitors' prices
What Surge AI earns
Revenue, run rates and ARR as each was published. Run rates are often a best month times twelve, and gross figures include what passes through to experts.
- FY2024MeasurerevenueFigure$1.2B
Funding and acquisitions
- 30 Jul 2025EventvaluationAmount$1BValuation$25B
- 1 Jul 2025EventvaluationAmount$1BValuation$15B
Cite this
AIData.Broker, “Surge AI in the AI training data market”, reviewed 15 Oct 2026. https://aidata.markets/companies/surge
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 if you credit AIData.Broker and link to this page. Each row names the publication that stated it, and words quoted from a source keep that source's own terms.