The Rise of Mercor: How Three 22-Year-Olds Became the World's Youngest Self-Made Billionaires

Three 22-year-old co-founders—Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha—have made history by becoming the world's youngest self-made billionaires, dethroning Mark Zuckerberg. Their San Francisco-based AI recruiting platform, Mercor, achieved a staggering $10 billion valuation following a recent $350 million Series C funding round.

The trio's journey began not in a garage, but on a high-school debate team in the Bay Area, where they honed the analytical and persuasive skills that would become the bedrock of their entrepreneurial success.

• The Founders: Brendan Foody serves as the CEO, Adarsh Hiremath as the CTO, and Surya Midha as the Board Chairman. They famously dropped out of elite universities (Georgetown and Harvard) and received the prestigious Thiel Fellowship to focus on their venture.
• The Early Idea: Mercor launched in 2023 with the initial goal of using an AI platform to match talented engineers, particularly from India, with U.S. tech companies.
• The Pivot to AI Training: The company's explosive growth came from a timely pivot to "human-in-the-loop" services. Mercor now uses its AI to recruit and manage a global network of over 30,000 highly-skilled contractors—including Ph.D.s, lawyers, and domain experts—to train, audit, and refine advanced AI models for frontier labs.

Mercor's primary business now focuses on providing the specialized human labor necessary to make AI models safer, more accurate, and more human-like.

• Elite Clientele: Their platform serves major AI labs and tech giants, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and six of the "Magnificent Seven" tech companies.
• Rapid Growth: The company's annualized revenue run rate soared from $100 million to $500 million in a matter of months. A Series B round in February 2025 valued the company at $2 billion, which was quickly eclipsed by the recent $10 billion Series C valuation led by Felicis Ventures.
• Strategic Advantage: Mercor benefited significantly when Meta acquired a large stake in its main rival, Scale AI, prompting competing labs to seek a neutral alternative for their essential AI training and data-labeling infrastructure.

Despite their newfound wealth, the founders emphasize their intense work ethic. CEO Brendan Foody has attributed his success to an "obsessive drive," stating in a recent interview that he has "worked every day for the last three years."

"People generally burn out, not just from working hard, but from working hard on something that they don't feel as fulfilling and compounding." - Brendan Foody

However, their rapid ascent has not been without controversy. Mercor has faced a lawsuit from its competitor, Scale AI, over alleged trade secret theft, and the company has also been in the news over claims from some contractors regarding pay cuts after the abrupt end of a major AI project. Mercor maintains that the contract work is temporary and project-based.

In the AI economy, Mercor's story exemplifies how unprecedented fortunes are being created faster than ever, validating the business of monetizing human judgment and expertise to power the next generation of artificial intelligence.