The funding round, announced on Tuesday, included investors such as Benchmark, General Catalyst, Nvidia and Salesforce. The three 23-year-old co-founders of AI startup Mercor have doubled their fortunes after the company raised $750 million in a fresh funding round, taking its valuation to $20 billion, Forbes reported .
Mercor CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath and chairman Surya Midha are now worth an estimated $4.2 billion each, based on their respective 21% stakes in the company, according to Forbes. Their fortunes have risen from around $2.2 billion in October 2025, when the startup was valued at $10 billion. Founded in 2023, Mercor initially started as a recruiting platform connecting freelance coders in India with companies in the US.
The business later expanded into data labelling, connecting experts such as doctors and lawyers with leading AI companies, including OpenAI, to help train advanced AI models, according to Forbes. The company said in a press release that its fresh funding will be used to build out Mercor’s new evaluation and post-training business, which helps companies improve AI models by providing ways to measure how well they complete tasks.
