{"id":224120,"date":"2026-01-02T21:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T21:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/224120\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T21:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T21:39:08","slug":"how-ai-is-reshaping-work-and-who-gets-to-do-it-according-to-mercors-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/224120\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI is reshaping work and who gets to do it, according to Mercor&#8217;s CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">Three-year-old startup\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/10\/27\/mercor-quintuples-valuation-to-10b-with-350m-series-c\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Mercor<\/a>\u00a0has become a\u00a0$10 billion\u00a0middleman\u00a0in AI\u2019s data gold rush. The company connects AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic with former employees of Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and white-shoe law firms, paying them up to $200 an hour to share their industry\u00a0expertise\u00a0and train the AI models that could eventually automate their former employers out of business.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0bringing you a conversation with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/10\/29\/how-ai-labs-use-mercor-to-get-the-data-companies-wont-share\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">CEO Brendan Foody from this year\u2019s Disrupt<\/a>, where he explained why AI labs need high-skilled contractors instead of crowdsourced labor, how Scale AI\u2019s troubles accelerated\u00a0Mercor\u2019s\u00a0rise, and why he thinks the entire economy will converge on training AI agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Listen to the full episode to hear about:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>How Foody went from AWS credit consulting in high school to a\u00a0$10 billion\u00a0valuation\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Why the top 10-20% of contractors drive\u00a0the majority of\u00a0model improvement, and how\u00a0Mercor\u00a0finds them\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The gray area between employee knowledge and corporate secrets (and whether Goldman Sachs should be worried)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Why Foody believes all knowledge work will eventually become training data for AI agents\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">Subscribe to Equity on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/techcrunch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">YouTube<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/id1215439780\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/overcast.fm\/itunes1215439780\/equity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">\u00a0Overcast<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/5IEYLip3eDppcOmy5DmphC?si=rZDFHv2sQUul_g94iCRgpQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">\u00a0Spotify<\/a>\u00a0and all the casts. You\u00a0also can\u00a0follow Equity on<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EquityPod\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">\u00a0X<\/a>\u00a0and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@equitypod\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">\u00a0Threads<\/a>, at @EquityPod.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three-year-old startup\u00a0Mercor\u00a0has become a\u00a0$10 billion\u00a0middleman\u00a0in AI\u2019s data gold rush. The company connects AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,74156,218,219,33694,61,60,11457,6846,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-224120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-data-center","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-equity-podcast","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-mercor","16":"tag-techcrunch-disrupt-2025","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}