Chen is the founder of Surge AI, an assessor and facilitator of AI-generated data. The San Francisco-based company had revenue about $1.2 billion in revenue in 2024 and its clients have included OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft. It has engaged more than 200,000 PhD holders to train AI models and analyze data.
Chen's wealth comes from his stake in Surge AI, the data-labeling startup he founded in 2020.
The San Francisco-based business uses subject matter experts to train AI models and develop curated data sets, which it then sells to leading AI developers. It had more than 200,000 PhDs working for it as of April 2026, according to its website. Its customers have included OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, according to a June 20, 2023 New York Magazine report.
Surge generated $1.2 billion in revenue in 2024, according to a September 2025 Forbes report. It's valued at about 13 times revenue, based on the average multiples suggested by three analysts covering the data labeling industry. It's assumed to have no debt, and Chen is credited with an 82% stake after adjusting for estimated equity granted to non-founding employees.
A representative for Surge AI declined to comment.
Chen was born in 1988 and grew-up in Crystal River, Florida. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, he worked at his family's restaurant as a teenager before leaving for boarding school and then attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study mathematics.
Chen spent time working for a hedge fund run by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel before working on recommendation algorithms for technology companies including Google and Twitter. Frustrated by the lack of reliable, high-quality labeled data to use at work, he left in 2020 and founded Surge AI to help solve the problem.
Instead of raising money in the venture capital market, Chen bootstrapped the business, growing it to more than $1 billion in annual revenue by 2024 without any money from outside investors. In July 2025, Surge AI was in talks to raise outside cash at a $25 billion valuation, according to a July 2025 Bloomberg News report.