Edwin Chen
Edwin Chen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1987 or 1988 (age 38–39)[1] |
| Education | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known for | founder and CEO of Surge AI |
Edwin Chen (born 1987 or 1988) is an American billionaire businessman, and the founder and CEO of Surge AI.
Biography
[edit]Born circa 1988,[2] Chen is the son of Taiwanese immigrants to the US[3] His parents ran a Chinese-Thai-American restaurant in the small town of Crystal River, Florida,[4] and Chen worked at the family restaurant before his boarding school education as a teenager.[3] He studied mathematics, computer science and linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[5] He graduated MIT[6] in 2008.[7]
He joined Twitter in late 2011,[8] becoming a data scientist.[9] He oversaw Twitter's spam and health metrics.[10] He worked as a machine-learning engineer at Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Google, and Peter Thiel's hedge fund Clarium, before starting Surge AI.[1] In 2020,[11] he relocated from Silicon Valley to Manhattan to found Surge AI as a data-labeling firm, using several million dollars saved from tech jobs as startup funds.[12] As of July 2025, his company provided AI developers such as Google and OpenAI with human contractors to train MLMs.[13]
In 2025, he was named on of the 100 Most Influential People in AI by TIME.[4] In September 2025, Forbes ranked him as the wealthiest new entry onto the Forbes 400. He remained the CEO and majority owner of Surge AI.[14] At the time, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$18 billion, because of his c.75% stake in Surge AI.[15] He lives in Manhattan, New York City.[16]
References
[edit]- 1 2 "Edwin Chen". Forbes. Retrieved May 28, 2026.
- ↑ "Los nuevos dueños de Silicon Valley: los 40 jóvenes 'self-made' más ricos del mundo", Matt Durot, January 13, 2026, Forbes Argentina
- 1 2 "Edwin Chen". Bloomberg LP. Retrieved May 28, 2026.
- ↑ VnExpress. "Meet Edwin Chen, MIT graduate and youngest billionaire on Forbes' 400 richest Americans list - VnExpress International". VnExpress International – Latest news, business, travel and analysis from Vietnam. Archived from the original on October 11, 2025. Retrieved May 28, 2026.
- ↑ "Forbes Self-Made 250: The Greatest Living Self-Made Americans", Alex Knapp, April 09, 2026, Forbes
- ↑ "Linguistics News", September 17, 2025, MIT News
- ↑ "Twitter Data Scientist Takes on McDonald’s Entire Menu, Survives", Christopher Mims, March 22, 2012, MIT Technology Review
- ↑ "Twitter Uses Army of Low-Paid Workers To Manually Sort Hashtags For Advertisers", January 10, 2013, Business Insider
- ↑ "Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce", Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui, Gerrit De Vynck and Jeremy B. Merrill, October 20, 2022, The Washington Post
- ↑ "‘I hired a million of the world’s smartest people to fact-check AI’", Danny Fortson, December 20, 2025, The Sunday Times
- ↑ "37-year-old MIT techie joins the Forbes 400 list with AI fortune, says AI could write 'Nobel Prize-winning poetry': Who is Edwin Chen?", September 25, 2025, The Economic Times
- ↑ "An AI Startup Bootstrapped Its Way to $1 Billion in Revenue. Should VCs Be Nervous? Surge AI CEO Edwin Chen says he doesn’t like the tradeoffs that come with outside investment", Brian Contreras, July 15, 2025, Inc.
- ↑ "These 14 Billionaires Joined The Forbes 400 List In 2025", September 09, 2025, Forbes
- ↑ Gallagher, Thomas. "Marc Lore, Edwin Chen, Adam Foroughi And The 11 Other New Members Of The Forbes 400". Forbes. Retrieved May 28, 2026.
- ↑ Liu, Phoebe. "How The Low-Key Billionaire Behind Surge Is Beating Out Rivals Like Scale AI". Forbes. Retrieved May 28, 2026.