The hiring game has always been about people. The résumés, the interviews, the gut calls. Then AI stormed in and flipped the supply chain: machines hungry for human expertise to feed their learning loops. That’s where Mercor carved its lane. Founded in 2022 by Thiel Fellows Brendan Foody as CEO, Adarsh Hiremath as CTO, and Surya Midha as COO, the company began as a broad recruiting platform. It quickly evolved into something sharper: the middle layer of the AI economy, linking frontier labs with scientists, doctors, and lawyers who make models smarter.
You don’t talk about a $10 billion valuation without receipts. Mercor has them. In February 2025, it closed a $100 million Series B led by Felicis at a $2 billion valuation. Seven months later, revenue run-rate exploded from $75 million to nearly $450 million. Today, Felicis is considering doubling down, while new investors scramble to assemble SPVs for a chance to buy into Series C. Benchmark set the pace in Series A. General Catalyst bankrolled the seed. And when Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers, and NEA’s Scott Sandell are already on the cap table, you know you’re not just playing a startup game, you’re playing geopolitical chess.
The numbers sting with velocity. A 41 percent average monthly growth rate in 2024, spiking to 88 percent in February 2025. More than 300,000 professionals in its global pool. Over $50 million already paid out to talent. Unlike most AI startups burning through cash like kindling, Mercor booked $6 million profit in the first half of 2025. Rivals Scale AI and Surge AI can’t ignore it, even while filing lawsuits to slow it down.
The tech isn’t a simple matching engine. It runs 20-minute AI video interviews that capture skill beyond a résumé, parses portfolios and GitHub trails, and drops semantic search that filters hype from real signal. Beyond that, Mercor is building reinforcement learning infrastructure, a direct tether to how foundational models actually evolve. Partnerships already stretch across Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Tesla, and Nvidia. Translation: Mercor isn’t just staffing AI companies, it’s becoming part of their operating systems.
Leadership rounds out the story. Brendan Foody, a national debate champion turned founder, knows how to argue growth into reality. Adarsh Hiremath builds the technical backbone with zero wasted cycles. Surya Midha keeps the machine disciplined. And as of August 2025, former Uber Chief Product Officer Sundeep Jain joins as president to steer the company into its next orbit.
Next stop: New York City in January 2026. The lesson here isn’t subtle. Align velocity, precision, and capital, and a company built by twenty-two-year-olds can become the fastest growing business on Earth by revenue. Mercor proves AI doesn’t just need smarter algorithms, it needs smarter pipelines for the people behind them.
