Mercor’s 22-year-old founders have become the world’s youngest self-made billionaires after a $350 million funding round valued the AI recruitment startup at $10 billion, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg’s record.
Mercor, a fast-rising recruitment startup powering AI model training for Silicon Valley’s biggest labs, has created the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. Three 22-year-old cofounders, including two Americans of Indian origin, have dethroned Mark Zuckerberg as the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.
The San Francisco-based firm this week secured a massive $350 million funding round led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood. The deal values Mercor at $10 billion, making CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and board chairman Surya Midha billionaires overnight. Each reportedly holds about 22% ownership, according to Forbes.
The trio were once Bay Area high school debate teammates Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha are Indian-origin Americans.
“It feels surreal… This is far beyond anything we could have imagined two years ago,” Forbes quoted Foody as saying
Even by Silicon Valley standards — where young founders are often celebrated — Mercor’s leadership stands out for its youth. All three cofounders are Thiel Fellows, recipients of Peter Thiel’s $100,000 grants given to young innovators who skip college to build companies. They’ve since become emblematic of the AI generation’s new breed of twenty-something founders.
Speaking about the dramatic shift in his life, Hiremath, who left Harvard after his sophomore year, said: “If I weren’t working on Mercor, I’d have just graduated a few months ago. Everything changed so fast.”
With this latest valuation, the trio now tops the list of youngest tech billionaires, surpassing Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who briefly held the title at 27 following a $2 billion investment round. Before that, Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, now 28, had the distinction, while Lucy Guo, Wang’s cofounder, became the youngest self-made woman billionaire at 30.
All three Mercor founders achieved billionaire status earlier than Mark Zuckerberg, who first crossed the mark at 23. Midha, born two months after his peers, is the youngest of the three. Only Kylie Jenner reached the milestone younger — though Forbes later revised her valuation, citing inflated figures.
Founded in 2023, Mercor initially focused on connecting software engineers in India with US companies seeking freelance developers. The platform’s standout feature allowed candidates to interview with AI avatars, matching them to projects based on skill alignment. During this process, the company stumbled into the lucrative data labeling sector — linking specialised contractors like PhDs and lawyers with top-tier AI research labs, including OpenAI.
