NRI PULSE STAFF REPORT
San Francisco, CA, November 11, 2025: Adarsh Hiremath, Surya Midha and Brendan Foody have become the world’s youngest self-made billionaires at just 22 years old. The trio co-founded Mercor, a Bay Area startup that helps Silicon Valley’s biggest artificial intelligence (AI) labs train their models by connecting them with thousands of skilled human experts across industries.
According to Forbes, Mercor’s latest funding round has pushed its valuation to $10 billion, instantly minting the three former debate teammates from San Mateo County as billionaires. The company, founded in 2021 while they were still in college, has become one of the fastest-growing players in the rapidly expanding “human-in-the-loop” AI sector — an industry that relies on human intelligence to refine machine learning models.
Mercor started as a recruiting platform but pivoted to supplying specialized human expertise — from lawyers and doctors to engineers — to train and fine-tune artificial intelligence systems. Its clients reportedly include several major AI labs in Silicon Valley, although the company has not disclosed names for confidentiality reasons.
“AI systems are only as smart as the humans who train them,” CEO Brendan Foody told The Wall Street Journal. “We’ve built a global workforce that teaches AI to think more like people.”
Hiremath, Mercor’s chief technology officer, and Midha, who serves as chairman, are both children of Indian immigrants and were classmates of Foody at Aragon High School in San Mateo. The three bonded on the school’s debate team before following separate college paths — at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania — and later reuniting to build their startup.
The company’s success mirrors a growing trend in the AI ecosystem, where young entrepreneurs are building fortunes not just by creating algorithms but by powering the human feedback loops that train them. Mercor reportedly pays more than $1.5 million daily to its network of human contractors worldwide, making it one of the largest employers in the AI training space.
At 22, the trio has joined a rarefied club — becoming, as Forbes notes, “the world’s youngest self-made billionaires,” marking a defining moment for Silicon Valley’s youth-driven AI revolution.
Cover photo credit: Mercor.ai/Instagram.
