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Mercor Raises $350 Million at $10 Billion Valuation, Minting Three 22-Year-Old Billionaires

The valuation underscores intense investor demand for data-labeling firms.

Overview

  • Felicis Ventures led the $350 million round with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst and Robinhood, setting Mercor’s value at $10 billion.
  • CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath and chair Surya Midha each hold roughly 22% stakes, making them the world’s youngest self-made billionaires, according to Forbes.
  • Founded in 2023, Mercor grew from an AI recruiting platform connecting Indian engineers to U.S. clients into a provider of data-labeling and model-training services for labs such as OpenAI.
  • Mercor reports a $500 million annualized revenue run rate as of September, up from $100 million in March, following recognition on the Forbes Cloud 100.
  • Scale AI sued Mercor in September alleging trade-secret theft involving a former Scale executive, posing a legal and reputational risk in an increasingly competitive market.