Mercor company profile: valuation, funding & revenue

This Mercor company profile covers the company's valuation, revenue, funding rounds, investors and history. Mercor works in artificial intelligence, with a focus on expert data and talent marketplace for AI labs. It was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. Its latest valuation on record is US$10 billion (October 2025). Every figure links to a public source, and anything the company hasn't disclosed is marked as such.

Revenue

Funding history

Mercor timeline

Key dates from the sources on this page, oldest first. Metric snapshots are listed after the funding events.

• 2023 — Mercor is founded in San Francisco by Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha.
• Feb 2025 — Series B: US$100M, valuing the company at US$2B. Investors: Felicis (lead).
• Oct 2025 — Series C: US$350M, valuing the company at US$10B. Investors: Felicis (lead); Benchmark, General Catalyst, Robinhood Ventures.
• June 2026 — Reported revenue run rate: Gross annualised revenue reported above US$2 billion in mid-2026; most of it is paid out to contractors.
• July 2026 — Reported talks: Talks to raise at about US$20 billion reported in July 2026; not confirmed as closed.

Investors

Overview

Mercor runs a marketplace that connects AI labs with skilled professionals who help train and evaluate AI models. When a lab wants its model to be better at law, medicine, finance, coding or science, it needs experts in those fields to write examples, grade the model's answers and design difficult test problems. Mercor finds, vets and pays those experts, often doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers and PhD researchers, and manages the projects for its clients. It has become one of the largest suppliers of expert human data to the AI industry.

Brendan Foody, the CEO, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha founded Mercor in 2023. The three were friends from high school in the San Francisco Bay Area and became Thiel Fellows, receiving grants to leave university and start a company. Mercor began as an AI-powered hiring platform that used AI interviews to assess candidates for software jobs, then pivoted to serving AI labs when it saw demand for expert contractors explode. The founders are among the youngest billionaires in the world on paper.

How Mercor works

Experts apply through Mercor's platform, complete AI-led interviews and skills assessments, and are matched to projects. A project might involve a team of lawyers writing hundreds of difficult legal questions with model answers, radiologists reviewing AI interpretations of scans, or software engineers building realistic coding tasks for AI agents to attempt. Mercor manages quality control and pays the contractors, often at high hourly rates for specialised skills. AI labs pay Mercor for the work, and Mercor keeps a margin.

Revenue: gross versus net

Mercor's revenue is often quoted as a gross figure, including the money it pays out to contractors. In mid-2026 reports said its annualised gross revenue had passed US$2 billion, roughly doubling within months, and that the vast majority came from foundation model companies. Because contractors receive most of that money, Mercor's net revenue, what it keeps, is much smaller; analysts have estimated it at roughly a quarter to a third of the gross figure. That distinction matters when comparing Mercor with software companies, as explained in our guide to ARR versus revenue. Mercor has said it is profitable on a cash flow basis. We show revenue as not disclosed in the data table because the company hasn't published audited figures.

Funding

• February 2025, Series B: US$100 million at a US$2 billion valuation, led by Felicis.
• October 2025, Series C: US$350 million at a US$10 billion valuation, led by Felicis, with Benchmark, General Catalyst and new investor Robinhood Ventures. The valuation rose five times in about eight months.

In July 2026, reports said Mercor was in talks to raise at about US$20 billion. We haven't seen the round confirmed, so we use the October 2025 figure.

Why AI labs need expert data

Early language models learned from text scraped from the internet. To push them further, especially in professional fields and complex reasoning, labs need high-quality examples written and checked by real experts, and they need people to judge whether a model's answer is genuinely correct. As AI agents take on longer tasks, labs also need realistic "environments" and tasks that mirror real jobs, built by people who do those jobs. That demand has created a large market for expert data, and Mercor, Surge AI and Scale AI are among its largest suppliers.

The market shifted in 2025 after Meta's investment in Scale AI. Some labs reduced their work with Scale over concerns about a competitor's ownership, and spread spending across other suppliers, which helped Mercor and others grow quickly.

Competition

Mercor competes with Scale AI, Surge AI, Turing, Invisible Technologies, Handshake's AI training business and many smaller firms, as well as labs' own in-house data teams. Competition focuses on the quality of experts, speed of delivery, price and trust. Mercor's advantages are its large network of vetted professionals, AI-driven recruiting and close relationships with leading labs.

Mercor at a glance

Mercor is a San Francisco company founded in 2023 by Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha that supplies expert contractors to train and evaluate AI models. It raised US$100 million at US$2 billion in February 2025 and US$350 million at US$10 billion in October 2025, led by Felicis. Reports in 2026 put its gross annualised revenue above US$2 billion, mostly paid out to contractors.

Risks

• Customer concentration: a small number of AI labs account for most revenue, and any lab cutting spending would have a large effect.
• Labour classification: companies relying on large numbers of contractors face legal risk if regulators or courts decide workers should be classed as employees; several AI data companies have faced lawsuits over this.
• Changing training methods: if labs find ways to rely more on synthetic data generated by AI, demand for human experts could fall.
• Margins: as competition grows, labs may push for lower prices.

For professionals considering AI training work

Many experts take on AI training projects alongside their main jobs. Before signing up with any platform, check how work is assessed and paid, how stable project availability is, how confidential client information is handled, and the tax implications of contractor income in your country.

Latest developments (October 2026)

Bloomberg reported in July 2026 that Mercor was in early talks to raise at a US$20 billion valuation, double its October 2025 Series C at US$10 billion, and chief executive Brendan Foody said its annualised revenue run rate had passed US$2 billion, according to Briefs. Mercor also agreed to buy Deeptune, and in 2026 faced a data breach and lawsuits from contract workers. See our AI training data guide.

What to watch

Watch for confirmation of a new funding round, net revenue and profitability disclosures, diversification beyond a few labs, legal developments around contractor status, and whether demand for expert data keeps growing as labs change training methods.

Takeaways

AI labs and enterprises can source specialised experts quickly through marketplaces. Founders can learn from Mercor's pivot towards the fastest-growing demand. Investors should compare valuations using net revenue, not gross bookings.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from the public sources below. Where sources disagreed, we used the company's own announcement or a primary news report. Private-company data changes; check the date beside each figure.

1. TechCrunch
2. Dealroom
3. Value Add VC