Three founders, not one prodigy
Mercor’s story must name all three people. Brendan Foody is CEO, Adarsh Hiremath is CTO, and Surya Midha moved from COO to chairman. They met on a high-school debate team, later entered different universities, and left together to start the company in 2023.
The value of that shared history is more than “knowing each other early.” Debate training requires quickly researching unfamiliar industries, breaking down arguments, and building evaluation standards—abilities Mercor later used when designing expert evaluations and rubrics for models.
Starting with one cross-border recruiting transaction
At a hackathon in São Paulo, the three tried to help an American company find engineers overseas. The first customer paid $500 per week; Mercor paid about 70% of that to the engineer and kept the service fee. This small transaction validated three things: companies would pay for screening, cross-border talent had price differences, and much of the process could be software-ized.
The real turning point came when AI labs began buying large amounts of human expert feedback. Mercor moved from “recruit people for companies” to “organize professionals to help train and evaluate models,” changing the customer budget, task frequency, and network effects.
The boundary of paper results
The October 2025 Series C pushed Mercor’s valuation to $10 billion. Based on roughly 22% personal ownership, Forbes estimated the three founders’ paper wealth; that is not cash and changes with later financing, liquidation preferences, and company-valuation changes.
Media reports in 2026 used a $1 billion annualized revenue run-rate figure. That likewise does not mean Mercor had recognized $1 billion in revenue in a complete fiscal year.