Mercor
Category: AI in HR & Talent
Mercor organizes human intelligence to power the AI economy by connecting domain experts (scientists, doctors, lawyers) with AI labs to train foundational AI models. Mercor was founded in 2023. The company is led by Brendan Foody. Based in San Francisco, CA, USA. Team size: 101-500. Total funding raised: $483.6M. Latest round: Series B ($100M, Feb 2025) at $2B valuation. Key investors include Felicis, Benchmark, General Catalyst, DST Global, Menlo Ventures.
- Founded
- 2023
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Team size
- 101-500
- Total funding
- $483.6M
Value proposition
Mercor provides AI labs with vetted domain experts for model training, evaluation, and reinforcement learning, solving the data bottleneck in frontier AI development.
Products and solutions
Expert network for AI model training, APEX-Agents benchmark, AI-powered expert matching and evaluation platform
Unique value
Mercor provides the human expertise layer that frontier AI models need for post-training, RLHF, and evaluation — solving the data bottleneck that pre-training alone cannot address.
Target customer
Frontier AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind) and enterprises needing domain experts for model training, RLHF, and AI evaluation.
Industries served
AI/ML, Software Engineering, Law, Medicine/Healthcare, Finance/Investment Banking, Consulting, Biotech, Scientific Research
Technology advantage
AI-powered vetting system conducting 20-min structured video interviews; proprietary dataset on talent quality from 468K+ evaluated applicants; network effects from expert placements creating compounding data advantages.
How they differentiate
Mercor pivoted from AI recruiting to become the expert service layer for frontier model development, capitalizing on the data bottleneck after Meta's Scale AI acquisition caused AI labs to seek alternatives.
Main competitors
Scale AI, Surge AI, Invisible Technologies, Turing AI
Key partnerships
Felicis, Benchmark, General Catalyst, DST Global, Menlo Ventures, Robinhood Ventures
Notable customers
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta
Major milestones
Rapid valuation growth to $2B (Feb 2025) then $10B (Oct 2025), Expansion to 30,000+ contractors paying $1.5M+ daily, $500M ARR trajectory, APEX-Agents benchmark launch (Jan 2026), Founders became youngest self-made billionaires (2025)
Growth metrics
Scaled from $1M to $500M ARR in ~20 months. Manages 30,000+ contractors with $1.5M+ daily payouts. On track to $500M ARR faster than any company before.
Market positioning
Mercor positions itself as critical infrastructure for the AI economy, organizing human intelligence to power frontier model development and post-training.
Geographic focus
Global talent network across 25+ countries. HQ in San Francisco, CA. Expanding to NYC (Jan 2026 per CEO LinkedIn).
Patents and IP
Not specified in available sources.
About Brendan Foody
Brendan Foody is the co-founder and CEO of Mercor, an AI-powered recruitment platform. He is a Thiel Fellow and dropped out of Georgetown University to start the company. He has experience in the tech industry, having previously founded A1 Operations and worked in policy at Advanced Energy Economy (AEE).
Official website: https://mercor.com/