Three 22‑year‑old friends from the Bay Area just turned their recruiting startup into a $10 billion company and themselves into the world’s youngest self‑made billionaires.
Their company, Mercor, started as a simple idea about connecting engineers with jobs. It quickly turned into a core piece of the AI ecosystem, helping major labs train the models that are changing how we work and live.
This is a startup story about timing, grit, and focus, told through the rise of Mercor and its founders: CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and board chairman Surya Midha.
Mercor’s Breakout Moment: A $10 Billion AI Recruiting Startup
Mercor is a recruiting startup that helps some of Silicon Valley’s biggest AI labs train their models. The company recently announced a $350 million funding round led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood.
That round valued Mercor at $10 billion, which pushed each of its three founders into billionaire status. Forbes estimates each holds roughly a 22% stake in the company.
You can find a deeper breakdown of their rise in Forbes’ coverage of the youngest self-made billionaires at Mercor.
Foody described the moment simply: it feels “very surreal” and “beyond our wildest imaginations” compared to where they were just two years ago. In other words, the scale of the outcome is far beyond what they reasonably expected when they started.
Mercor is not just a high‑valuation story. It also sits at the heart of the AI boom by solving a very practical problem: how top labs find expert human help to train and improve their models.
The Founders: Debate Kids Turned Billionaire Builders
All three founders grew up in the Bay Area and all three are children of software engineers. Tech was not some distant idea, it was part of their family lives.
A quick snapshot of the team:
- Brendan Foody: CEO
- Adarsh Hiremath: CTO
- Surya Midha: Board chairman and the youngest of the trio by about two months
The three first crossed paths around competitive debate:
- Hiremath and Midha met at age 10, going head‑to‑head in elementary school debate tournaments.
- They later met Foody on their high school debate team, where all three sharpened skills that now matter a lot in startups: structured thinking, fast research, and clear communication.
Their shared background and path are covered in more detail in the Mercor entry on Wikipedia, which notes how they went from high school friends to founders in a few short years.
What makes their story even more striking is how compressed the timeline is. Hiremath pointed out that if he had stayed on the traditional path, he would have just graduated college a few months ago. Instead, he is now CTO of a multibillion‑dollar company.
How Mercor Started: From Global Coders to AI Data Labeling
Mercor did not begin as an AI data labeling company. Its original goal in 2023 was more straightforward:
Match engineers in India with U.S. companies that needed freelance coders.
To support this, the team built a recruiting platform that:
- Let applicants interview with AI avatars
- Matched candidates with companies that needed specific skills
This is where their startup story takes a sharp turn.
In building that recruiting engine, the founders stumbled into an even more valuable problem. AI models need large amounts of high‑quality labeled data, and not just basic labeling. Advanced models often require work done by expert‑level contractors, including PhDs and lawyers.
Mercor realized it could use its recruiting infrastructure to:
- Source specialized talent
- Match them with frontier AI labs such as OpenAI
- Power the training and refinement of cutting‑edge AI models
This move into data labeling, bolted onto an already working recruiting engine, put Mercor in the center of AI growth. It turned a simple marketplace idea into a core service for some of the most advanced labs in the world.
For readers who want more backstory on how the company was formed, the Mercor Wikipedia article offers a concise history.
The Funding, The Numbers, And The New Billionaires
The funding news is what pushed Mercor and its founders into the global spotlight.
The Big Round
- Funding amount: $350 million
- Lead investor: Felicis Ventures
- Other investors: Benchmark, General Catalyst, Robinhood
- Valuation: $10 billion
At that valuation, with each founder holding around 22%, all three cross the estimated billion‑dollar mark in personal net worth.
Revenue Growth
Mercor is not just a paper unicorn. The company has real revenue behind it:
- In March, Mercor had a $100 million annualized revenue run rate.
- By September, that number had grown to $500 million in annualized run rate.
That kind of jump in only a few months shows how intense the demand is from AI labs that need specialist labor for training data. It also explains why investors are willing to back the company at such a high valuation.
Mercor has already gained recognition beyond the funding news. The company:
- Appeared on the Forbes 2025 Under 30 list for its founders.
- Debuted on the Forbes Cloud 100 list, which highlights top private cloud companies.
These milestones signal that Mercor is now seen as a leading player in both cloud services and AI infrastructure.
Beating Mark Zuckerberg’s Record (And Everyone Else’s)
The Mercor founders are now the youngest self‑made tech billionaires ever, at age 22. That puts them ahead of some very familiar names.
Here is how their debut compares to a few other recent tech and media stars:
| Name | Company / Role | Age When First Called Self‑Made Billionaire | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercor founders | Mercor | 22 | Youngest self‑made tech billionaires ever |
| Mark Zuckerberg | Meta (Facebook) | 23 | Previously the yardstick for young tech wealth |
| Shane Coplan | Polymarket CEO | 27 | Held the youngest title for about 20 days |
| Alexandr Wang | Scale AI | 28 | Youngest self‑made billionaire for about 18 months |
| Lucy Guo | Scale AI co‑founder | 30 | Youngest self‑made woman billionaire after Taylor Swift |
| Kylie Jenner | Kylie Cosmetics | 21 | Earlier “youngest ever” title, later revised by Forbes investigations |
Before the Mercor round:
- Shane Coplan, CEO of prediction market Polymarket, briefly held the title of youngest self‑made billionaire after a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange. That reign lasted about 20 days.
- Alexandr Wang, co‑founder of Scale AI, held the title for about 18 months.
- Lucy Guo, Wang’s co‑founder at Scale AI, became the youngest self‑made woman billionaire at age 30, taking the title from Taylor Swift.
Kylie Jenner is younger than the Mercor founders at her billionaire debut, but that case is its own story. Forbes later investigated her numbers and concluded that Kylie Cosmetics’ revenue had been overstated, which reduced her estimated net worth.
Against this backdrop, Mercor’s rise is not just about youth. It also puts them in a line of AI‑focused founders whose companies serve as core tools for other AI builders. For a more personality‑driven angle on that trend, Fortune has a profile of Foody and Hiremath in its feature on the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at Mercor.
The Teal Fellowship And The Decision To Skip College
All three founders are Thiel Fellows, part of billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s program that pays young people $100,000 to leave or skip college and work on ambitious projects.
Here is how that played into their story:
- The fellowship encourages people to forego college in exchange for pursuing ideas full time.
- All three Mercor founders joined the program, which helped them bet on their startup early.
- Hiremath spent two years at Harvard, then dropped out after his sophomore year.
He later reflected that without Mercor, he would be walking out of a graduation ceremony instead of running an AI company. That kind of contrast sums up how sharp the fork in the road was for them.
The fellowship did not make them billionaires on its own, but it removed some of the friction and fear that usually comes with walking away from college to build something uncertain.
Bay Area Roots And A Childhood Surrounded By Tech
Mercor’s story also reflects what it is like to grow up in the Bay Area when tech is everywhere.
Some details that shaped them:
- All three founders are Bay Area natives.
- Each had at least one parent working as a software engineer.
- Foody’s mother worked on Meta’s real estate team.
- His father founded a graphics interface company in the 1990s, then shifted into startup advising.
For these founders, building a startup was not an exotic move. It felt like a natural extension of what they saw at home and around them.
Their background did not guarantee success, but it did mean that new ideas, risk, and software were normal parts of life well before Mercor existed.
Work First, Everything Else Later
You might expect three brand‑new billionaires to celebrate with cars, houses, or other flashy buys. According to Foody, that has not happened.
His schedule looks like this:
- He leaves the office around 10:30 p.m. on an average day.
- He does that six days a week.
- That does not leave a lot of time to shop, travel, or get distracted.
In his words, “there’s not a whole lot of time outside of that to be distracted by things outside of the business.”
The subtext is clear. For them, the reward is the company itself. The wealth is a byproduct of something they are still in the middle of building. That mindset ties back to how many successful founders think: the work matters more than the scoreboard.
What This Startup Story Teaches Other Founders
Mercor’s rise is extreme, but it still holds practical lessons for anyone interested in building something.
Here are a few themes that stand out:
1. Start with a simple problem, stay open to a bigger one
They began by connecting engineers in India with U.S. companies. The real breakout came when they saw how that system could support AI data labeling for top labs. The original idea was not wrong, but the bigger opportunity sat next to it.
2. Use your unfair advantages
They grew up around tech, had parents who understood software, and met each other in debate tournaments that rewarded logic and clear thinking. They used those strengths instead of pretending to be something else.
3. Move fast when demand is real
Growing from $100 million to $500 million in annualized revenue in six months shows both strong demand and a team willing to push hard when the market is ready. They did not wait to “feel ready” before scaling.
4. Focus beats lifestyle
Even after becoming billionaires on paper, they work late six days a week and say they do not have time to buy flashy things. That level of focus might not be for everyone, but it is part of their outcome.
For founders, Mercor is a reminder that a startup story is rarely clean or predictable. It unfolds as you build, listen to customers, and spot real needs.
Also Read: How A Simple Directory Hit $34K/Month (Built In Just 3 Hours)Conclusion: A New Benchmark For Young Founders
Mercor’s journey from a small hiring platform to a $10 billion AI recruiting powerhouse reads like a compressed history of the current tech cycle. Three friends, one idea that kept evolving, and a market hungry for better tools to train AI models.
They passed Mark Zuckerberg’s age record, leapfrogged other young founders, and turned debate‑team skills into a company that powers the next wave of AI. Behind the headlines, their startup story is about timing, relentless work, and the willingness to pivot when a larger problem appears.
As AI keeps expanding, Mercor’s role and the choices of its founders will stay under the spotlight. The bigger question now is not how they got here, but what they build next with the platform they have created.
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