At 23, Two Indian-Origin Billionaires Double Wealth, Now Worth $4.2 Billion Each

The three 23-year-old co-founders of AI startup Mercor have doubled their fortunes after the company raised $750 million in a fresh funding round, taking its valuation to $20 billion. The funding round, announced on Tuesday, included investors such as Benchmark, General Catalyst, Nvidia and Salesforce. According to Forbes, Mercor CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath and board chairman Surya Midha are now worth an estimated $4.2 billion each, based on their respective 21% stakes in the company. Their fortunes have risen from around $2.2 billion in October 2025, when Mercor was valued at $10 billion following a $350 million funding round.

The three founders became the world's youngest self-made billionaires at the age of 22 last year, surpassing Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who was 27 at the time, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who became a billionaire at 23. They continue to hold the title, with Midha being the youngest among the three by approximately two months.

Two of Mercor's three co-founders, Midha and Hiremath, are Indian-Americans

Hiremath and Midha are Indian-origin entrepreneurs who studied at Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys school in San Jose, California and were part of the debate team. The duo made history by becoming the first team from their school to win all three national policy debate championships in a single year.

The founders met during their high school debate days and went on to establish Mercor in 2023. They were also selected for the Thiel Fellowship, founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel, which provides young entrepreneurs with a $100,000 grant to pursue their business ventures.

Midha, a second-generation immigrant whose parents moved to the US from New Delhi, was born in Mountain View and raised in San Jose, California. Hiremath later studied computer science at Harvard University but dropped out after two years to focus on Mercor.

What Does Mercor Do?

The company was initially launched as a recruitment startup to connect freelance coders in India with US-based companies. It later expanded into data labelling, connecting professionals such as doctors and lawyers with leading AI companies, including OpenAI, to help train AI models.

In a press release, Mercor said the latest funding will be used to expand its evaluation and post-training business. These services help companies assess how well AI models perform tasks and improve their capabilities before deployment. The focus comes as businesses increasingly adopt AI agents to handle tasks involving customers, software code and company data.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Foody said Mercor had grown from $1 million to $3 billion in gross annualised revenue in just over two years. He added that the company recorded $250 million in gross sales in its latest month and had more than doubled its customer base from the previous year to over 100.

We raised our $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation from @benchmark, @generalcatalyst, @nvidia, @salesforce, and @zoom. @mercor scaled from $1M to $3B in run-rate revenue in 27 months, the fastest in history to $3B. For 2 years, we've organized human intelligence to build evals and training data for every frontier lab. The labs are the leading indicator for AI startups, then the Fortune 500. Our growth has accelerated over the past 6 months as enterprises start evaluating and training their own models. For many, owning their intelligence is existential.

— Brendan (can/do) (@BrendanFoody) November 10, 2026

Despite its latest valuation, Mercor remains behind some of its competitors. Scale AI was valued at around $29 billion when Meta acquired a 49% stake in the company in June 2025, while Forbes estimates Surge AI's valuation at approximately $24 billion.

Meanwhile, Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara, 30, is currently recognised as the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire.