Three 22-year-old high school friends are now the world’s youngest self-made billionaires, according to Forbes. Their San Francisco-based artificial intelligence hiring startup, Mercor, recently raised $350 million in funding led by Felicis Ventures, valuing the company at $10 billion.
Forbes estimates that each founder — Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha — holds roughly 22% of the company, making their personal fortunes soar past the billion-dollar mark all before their 23rd birthday.
The trio’s journey began long before Mercor. Foody, Hiremath, and Midha competed together on debate teams as children and shared an interest in technology from an early age. All three are Thiel Fellows, a program founded by billionaire Peter Thiel that offers young entrepreneurs $100,000 grants to pursue business ventures instead of college.
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From Dorm Rooms to Data Labeling Powerhouse
Founded in 2023, Mercor originally aimed to connect engineers in India with U.S. companies for freelance coding work, Forbes reported. Along the way, the startup found a niche in AI data labeling, pairing expert contractors — including Ph.D.s, lawyers, and software engineers — with leading AI labs such as OpenAI. This human-AI collaboration has become essential for training sophisticated AI models.
Mercor’s platform automates recruitment with AI, screening applicants and matching them with companies in real-time. In the Mercor blog, Foody wrote that the system evaluates resumes, portfolios, and even GitHub accounts, allowing companies to find candidates “within seconds” and manage payments directly through the platform. The approach has propelled Mercor’s revenue from $100 million in March to a $500 million annualized run rate by September.
“While most new categories take time to build momentum, we’ve broken every growth record,” Foody posted on X. He said that Mercor is paying out $1.5 million per day to experts they work with. To show a comparison of other startups in their first two years, he added that Uber paid around $1 million to drivers and Airbnb paid around $10 million to hosts.
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Breaking Records in Youthful Silicon Valley
At 22, Mercor’s founders beat Mark Zuckerberg, who became a billionaire at 23, to set a new record for youngest self-made tech billionaire. The title had changed hands several times in recent years, previously held briefly by Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and Scale AI cofounder Alexandr Wang, according to Forbes.
