The three 22-year-old founders of Mercor – Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha – have become the world's youngest self-made billionaires. Their artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recruitment startup has reached a valuation of $10 billion (approximately CZK 230 billion). Each owns roughly a 22% stake in the San Francisco-based company, which they founded in 2023. Brendan Foody is the CEO, Adarsh Hiremath is the CTO, and Surya Midha is the chairman of the board.
First Steps
All three are high school friends from California's Bay Area, where they competed together on a debate team. Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha, who are of Indian-American descent, attended Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, where they became the first debate team in history to win all three national policy debate tournaments in a single year. Brendan Foody joined them later. Adarsh Hiremath studied computer science at Harvard but dropped out after his sophomore year to focus fully on Mercor. Surya Midha was born in Mountain View, California, and grew up in San Jose as a second-generation immigrant.
Mercor's Focus and Achievements
Mercor focuses on recruiting specialists to train AI models at leading laboratories such as OpenAI. The company initially connected engineers from India with freelance opportunities at American firms, but soon pivoted to data labeling – matching experts such as PhDs and lawyers with AI projects. The company uses AI avatars to conduct interviews and match candidates. In September 2025, Brendan Foody announced that annual revenue had reached $500 million, equivalent to about CZK 11.5 billion, up from $100 million (about CZK 2.3 billion) in March of the same year.
This week, Mercor raised $350 million (about CZK 8 billion) in a funding round. This brought the company's valuation to $10 billion. The three founders have thus surpassed Mark Zuckerberg, who became a billionaire at the age of 23. All three are Thiel Fellowship recipients – a $100,000 grant from investor Peter Thiel awarded for dropping out of college. Mercor appeared on the Forbes Under 30 list for 2025 and on the Cloud 100 list of the top privately held cloud companies.
The founders grew up in tech-oriented environments – all of their parents are software engineers. Brendan Foody's mother worked for Meta on its real estate team, while his father founded a graphical interface company in the 1990s. Adarsh Hiremath conducted research for Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and OpenAI board member who later invested in Mercor. Despite their newfound wealth, they remain focused on their work: Brendan Foody leaves the office at around 10:30 p.m. six days a week. The company faces competition in the industry from firms such as Scale AI, which is suing Mercor over alleged theft of trade secrets.
Sources: forbes.com and news.ssbcrack.com
