Surge AI review
Based in San Francisco and founded in 2020, Surge AI focuses on language data and human feedback for frontier AI labs.
| Based in | San Francisco, California |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2020 |
| How it works | Writing and language tasks, using its own software and skilled workers |
| Kinds of files | Text, Rating AI chatbot answers |
| Audits and laws it names | GDPR |
| How it prices | Per project |
| Team | About 1 million annotators in 2025 |
Surge AI in two facts
- For 2024, Surge reported $1.2 billion in revenue with no outside investment raised.
- In May 2025, a class action said the company misclassified its annotators as contract workers.
Who it suits
It suits work on model feedback and evaluation when skilled coders, writers and domain experts are needed.
Sources for these facts:
Companies like Surge AI
| Company | Based in | Kinds of files | Audits and laws it names | How it prices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surge AI | San Francisco, California | Text, Rating AI chatbot answers | GDPR | Per project |
| Scale AI | San Francisco, California | Photos, Video, Text, 3D laser scans (LiDAR), Satellite and map images, Rating AI chatbot answers | SOC 2 Type II | Per project |
| Appen | Sydney, Australia and Kirkland, Washington | Photos, Video, Text, Sound, 3D laser scans (LiDAR), Medical scans, Rating AI chatbot answers | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR | Per project |
| TELUS Digital | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | Photos, Text, Sound, 3D laser scans (LiDAR), Rating AI chatbot answers | SOC 2, TISAX, ISO 27001 | Per project |
| iMerit | San Jose, California | Photos, Video, Text, Sound, 3D laser scans (LiDAR), Medical scans, Rating AI chatbot answers | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 9001, HIPAA, GDPR, TISAX | Per project |
Questions for Surge AI before signing
- Where do your teams work, and which of them would label our data?
- How is accuracy measured, and what portion of labels gets a second-person check?
- Could we begin with a pilot, and would it cost nothing?
- Before we send data, which security audit reports can you provide?
- What is your pricing for this kind of work: per project, per hour or per label?
Send one brief, hear from three vendors
Describe your data once and we pass it to three annotation vendors that label that kind of data, so you can compare quotes side by side.
- One short form instead of three sales calls
- Matched on data type, volume and security needs
- You choose who to talk to