20VC: Scale, Surge, Turing, Mercor: Who Wins & Who Loses in Data Labelling | Is Revenue in Data Labelling Real or GMV? | Why 99% of Knowledge Work Will Go and What Happens Then? | Why SaaS is Dead in a World of AI with Jonathan Siddharth @ Turing
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jonathan Siddharth is Founder and CEO of Turing, one of the fastest-growing AI companies advancing frontier models. Jonathan has led the company to an astonishing $300M ARR with just $225M raised and a profitable company. A Stanford-trained AI scientist, Jonathan previously helped pioneer natural language search at Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft.
AGENDA:
03:35 Data, Compute, Algorithms: What is Most Abundant? What is Lacking Most?
09:18 What Does No One Know About AI's Data Requirements That Everyone Should?
17:05 The Biggest Challenges Enterprises Have with AI Adoption
20:38 Why Will 99% of Knowledge Work Will be Gone in 10 Years
27:12 How Will Data-Driven Feedback Loops Replace Technology as the Moat
36:08 Who Wins the Data Labelling Market? Who Loses?
38:23 Is Revenue BS in Data Labelling? Are Players Calling GMV Revenue?
45:20 Why is SaaS Dead in a World of AI?
51:23 Will the Phone be the Primary User Interface to an AI World?
57:07 Quickfire Round
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I think the era of data labeling companies is over, and it's now the era of research accelerators. |
| 0:05.2 | All knowledge work is going to be automated. It's only a matter of time. I don't see an AI bubble. |
| 0:11.8 | These models are incredibly powerful today. SaaS, as we know it, I think is over. I think it's |
| 0:17.5 | completely over. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so excited |
| 0:21.5 | for the show today. So I'm fascinated by the data labelling market. McCour, Surge, Cheering, Invisible. |
| 0:28.7 | There are seven players that I know of that do over 100 million in annual recurring revenue. |
| 0:34.4 | All of them have more than 50% of their revenue from two customers. |
| 0:38.3 | The way they use the term revenue is also sometimes super unclear versus GMV. |
| 0:44.3 | There are bluntly just a lot of questions. Today I do not pull any punches, with the man leading one of these companies, |
| 0:50.3 | Jonathan Siddharth, founder and CEO of Turing, a company that he has |
| 0:55.2 | scaled to over 350 million in annual recurring revenue, raising $225 million in the process, |
| 1:02.6 | and now being a profitable company. |
| 1:04.7 | This is an amazing discussion, and as I said, the tough questions get answered. |
| 1:09.5 | But before we dive into the show today, are you drowning in AI tools, chat GPT for writing, |
| 1:15.4 | Notion for docs, Gmail for email, Slack for comms, and you're constantly copy-pasting |
| 1:21.2 | between them all losing context and losing time? |
| 1:24.7 | This is the AI productivity tax, and it's killing your output. |
| 1:28.8 | At 20 VC, we're all about speed of execution and superhuman is the AI productivity suite |
| 1:34.3 | that gives you superpowers everywhere you work. |
| 1:37.5 | With the intelligence of Grammali, mail and Coda built in, you can get things done faster |
| 1:43.2 | and collaborate seamlessly. |
| 1:45.2 | Finally, AI that works where you work, however you work. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.