Mercor
American technology company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mercor.io Corporation (Mercor) is an American artificial intelligence (AI) hiring startup that provides experts to train AI models and chatbots. The company's three founders became the youngest self-made billionaires in 2025. The company is headquartered in 181 Fremont, San Francisco.[2][1]
| |
| Mercor | |
Company type | Private |
| Industry | Artificial intelligence |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | 181 Fremont, San Francisco, California , United States |
Key people |
|
Number of employees | 300 (2025)[1] |
| Website | mercor |
History
Mercor was founded in 2023 by Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, three Bay Area high school friends who competed together on the Bellarmine College Preparatory Speech and Debate Team.[2][3] The three dropped out of college to focus on Mercor, and were later awarded Thiel Fellowships.[4][5] The company was originally formed to connect freelance programmers in India with companies in the United States, and they developed an AI platform to interview programmers and match them with hiring companies.[2] The company shifted focus to data labeling, matching expert contractors with AI companies like OpenAI looking for help to train their algorithms.[2][6]
In May 2025, the company hired Uber's former chief product officer Sundeep Jain as its first president.[7]
In October 2025, Bloomberg named Mercor in its list of 24 AI Startups to Watch in 2026, in the Foundation Builders category.[6] Later that month, the company raised a $350 million Series C at a $10 billion valuation, making the three then 22-year old founders the youngest self-made billionaires.[2][8]
In January 2026, the company released its first APEX-Agents AI benchmarking report, to show how successfully the leading AI models performed business tasks.[9]
In late March 2026, Mercor was reportedly impacted by a supply-chain attack involving the LiteLLM package, which potentially exposed up to 4 terabytes of internal data and contractor personally identifiable information. The breach led to multiple class-action lawsuits and a temporary pause in work from major clients, including Meta, as the company conducted forensic investigations into the exposure of proprietary training protocols.[10][11]
Business
Foody is the CEO, Hiremath CTO, and Midha board chairman.[2] All three founders appeared on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for 2025.[4][12]
Mercor recruits experts including engineers, lawyers, doctors, bankers and journalists to train AI models and chatbots.[7] Its customers include OpenAI and Anthropic.[7] According to the company, it manages 30,000 contractors as of October 2025.[13] Contractors interviewed by The Verge, New York Magazine, and Wired said they faced a stressful work environment, poor management, and declining pay.[14][15]
The company also produces an AI research benchmark called APEX-Agents, which studies how effectively different AI models perform tasks in business areas including consulting, investment banking, and law.[9][16]