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Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody, and Surya Midha attended Bellarmine High School in San Jose. They co-founded Mercor in 2023.  (Mercor )

SAN FRANCISCO – Three Bay Area high school classmates, who all ended up dropping out of college together, have been named the youngest self-made billionaires in the world.

22-year-olds Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha founded the startup, Mercor, an artificial intelligence-powered recruiting and talent marketplace that uses real-life professionals in vast fields to help train and improve AI models on how jobs are performed.

Last week, Mercor, which has had a meteoric rise, reported a valuation of $10 billion as the company announced it has raised $350 million in series C funding.

Forbes recognition

With Foody as Mercor’s CEO, Hiremath its CTO, and Midha holding the role of board chairman, the young men have been named by Forbes as the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.  

In fact, Forbes also identified the three friends as “the youngest self-made tech billionaires ever,” noting they’re even younger than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was when he debuted on the publication’s billionaire list at the age of 23 in 2008. 

Foody, Hiremath, and Midha now replace Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, the 27-year-old tech entrepreneur who held Forbes’ title of youngest self-made billionaire for just 20 days, after unseating 28-year-old Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, the business and finance publication said.

SEE ALSO: This Bay Area native just unseated Taylor Swift as world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire

KTVU covered the Mercor founders back in March when the AI job recruiting platform was valued at $2 billion. 

Shift in business model

The company has shifted its initial business focus to offer a marketplace where experts are hired as contractors to train AI models by providing human feedback. 

The startup is constantly hiring professionals in a wide variety of fields, with referrals being a driving force in feeding and shaping its artificial intelligence models. 

“Mercor sits at the intersection of labor markets and AI research,” Foody wrote in a company blog last month. “At Mercor, our vast talent network trains frontier AI models in the same way teachers train students: by sharing knowledge, experience, and context that can’t be captured in code alone. Each project expands what models understand,” the CEO added.

Mercor said it’s changing how humans can take part in the evolving AI economy.

“We’re creating a new category of work in the AI economy, where software engineers, bankers, lawyers, and other professionals earn based on their experience while advancing the frontier of AI,” Foody wrote on X last week.

The backstory:

As a team, the Mercor co-founders go back to their days at Bellarmine College Preparatory School in San Jose, where the classmates also competed together as members of the school’s highly ranked speech and debate program.

Bellarmine’s principal told KTVU that the three made a lasting mark on the school community and have continued to give back to their alma mater, volunteering their time as debate coaches even after leaving the school. 

What they’re saying:

“Brendan, Adarsh, and Surya were some of Bellarmine’s top debaters in its history and captains of our history Speech and Debate team, which has now been ranked top in the country for four years in a row,” Principal Rod Jemison shared with KTVU back in March. “Their leadership and competitive abilities helped to usher in the current era of Bellarmine Speech and Debate’s incredible success,” Jemison added, noting that the former students have carried on Bellarmine’s mission of service.

Following high school graduation in 2021, the three left the Bay Area and all went on to prestigious colleges: Hiremath enrolled at Harvard University. Midha and Foody also headed east, both attending Georgetown University. 

But college life didn’t last long.

In 2023, during their sophomore year, the three friends dropped out to start up Mercor, as they set out to redefine the global workforce through AI.

They returned to the Bay Area where they set up their company’s headquarters in San Francisco. 

Record growth

The start-up said it’s experienced unprecedented growth. 

“Just 2 years after starting, Mercor is paying $1.5 million per day to experts in our marketplace,” Foody wrote on X, adding, “While most new categories take time to build momentum, we’ve broken every growth record.”

The CEO highlighted Mercor’s rapid ascent, showing the exponential payouts the company has made compared to how much gig economy tech giants Uber and Airbnb paid out in their first two years. 

“Uber paid out just over a $1 million to drivers. Airbnb paid out $10 million to hosts,” Foody wrote.

Mercor said it currently has 200 team members in the U.S. and some 160 workers abroad. 

$350 million in funding

Dig deeper:

Mercor’s $350 million series C funding was led by Menlo Park-based venture capital firm Felicis, with participation from San Francisco investors Benchmark and General Catalyst, as well as Philadelphia-based Robinhood Ventures, Foody told KTVU.

The company said that the investments allow it to accelerate its mission in the area of building a vast talent network, matching its experts with the right opportunities for the greatest impact, and speeding up its production as it automates everything, “from fraud detection and onboarding to analytics, review, and testing.”

Human and AI partnership 

Taking a different approach from many AI companies, Mercor has fully embraced the critical role of humans as part of its mission, viewing people as still superior to AI models in many areas.

“Models might be superhuman at Olympiad math, but they still can’t draft an email, negotiate a deal, or understand the tone of a legal argument. Humans give models that missing context,” Foody explained in a company blog, adding, “As AI continues to expand what is possible, new categories of work will be created.” 

Mercor said its role in the process is to tap into the necessary non-artificial human intelligence vital to shaping the vast and emerging AI workforce. 

“Human data is the foundation of the new economy. Human insight will guide AI, not compete with it,” Foody said, adding, “Our job is to unlock the human potential that will drive the AI economy forward.”

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