--- description: Find out why Edwin Chen made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2025: Edwin Chen image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf05fe5e53a2b13e4/6998c926c8dcb4e590b50652/Edwin-Chen-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 26, 2025 # Edwin Chen Founder and CEO, Surge AI by [Tharin Pillay](/author/tharin-pillay/) ## Tharin Pillay Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) Edwin Chen thinks AI is capable of “Nobel Prize-winning poetry, solving the [Riemann hypothesis](https://www.claymath.org/millennium/riemann-hypothesis/ "undefined"), and discovering the secrets of the universe”—but only if it’s trained on data that captures human expertise, creativity, and values. “Really high-quality data is critical to the future of AI and AGI,” he tells TIME. In 2020, Chen founded data-labeling firm [Surge AI](https://www.surgehq.ai/ "undefined"), bootstrapping it himself. Surge works with contractors—more than 1 million, by his estimate—to create and sell high-quality datasets to the likes of Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. It’s a lucrative line of work: in 2024, the startup generated over $1 billion in revenue, with the company now [reportedly](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-30/scale-rival-surge-ai-in-talks-for-funding-at-25-billion-value?embedded-checkout=true "undefined") seeking a valuation of over $25 billion as it raises funding. Different companies ask for different data, Chen says, adjusting for a model’s personality or internal safety priorities. He views the work as collaborative, not extractive. “We want AI to not just be this cold robotic thing that solves a bunch of math questions,” he says. To Chen, well-built AI is “rich and warm and creative,” able to communicate in a way that feels “inherently human.” He also believes that the creation of generally intelligent or superintelligent systems is inevitable, whether that’s in two years or 20 years. “They are going to be our descendants,” he says. “Like humanity’s children.” A former employee of Facebook and Twitter, Chen has seen firsthand how products designed to optimize for clicks can cause harm. If AGI is realized, Chen expects it to be significantly more powerful than today’s algorithmic platforms, while infiltrating every part of society. “There is almost an infinite potential for unintended consequences,” he says. Chen is sanguine about his own company’s potential contribution to such unintended consequences. “This is going to happen no matter what,” he says. “If it's not us, it's going to be somebody else. So we want to make sure we are the people best-positioned to ensure they are properly aligned.” Edwin Chen: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2025 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305876/edwin-chen/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305876/edwin-chen/"},"headline":"Edwin Chen","datePublished":"2025-08-26T18:54:12.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:44.793Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305876/edwin-chen/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf05fe5e53a2b13e4/6998c926c8dcb4e590b50652/Edwin-Chen-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tharin Pillay","jobTitle":"Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/tharin-pillay/"}],"creator":"Tharin Pillay","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf05fe5e53a2b13e4/6998c926c8dcb4e590b50652/Edwin-Chen-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305876/edwin-chen/","name":"Edwin Chen"}}]}] ```