- Three 22-year-olds founded AI recruitment startup Mercor, now worth $10 billion
- Mercor's AI tools connect Indian engineers with US firms and support major AI labs
- Founders are Thiel Fellows and made Forbes 2025 Under 30 and Cloud 100 lists
At just 22, the founders of AI recruitment startup Mercor have become the world's youngest self-made billionaires, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg, who made the list at 23 in 2008. Mercor was launched by three high school friends - Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha. According to Forbes, Mercor's recent $350 million funding round has valued the company at $10 billion, making its CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and board chairman Surya Midha the world's youngest self-made billionaires. Notably, Mercor develops AI-powered recruitment and data-labeling systems, providing human expertise to train models for major AI labs.
"It's definitely crazy. It feels very surreal. Obviously beyond our wildest imaginations, insofar as anything that we could have anticipated two years ago," Foody told Forbes.
Two of Mercor's co-founders, Midha and Hiremath, are Indian-Americans who studied at Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys high school in San Jose, California. As part of the school's debate team, the duo made history by becoming the first team to win all three national policy debate championships in a single year.
They later joined the debate team at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, where they met Foody. The trio became Thiel Fellows, receiving a $100,000 grant to pursue their startup ventures after being selected for the prestigious fellowship founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel.
"The thing that's crazy for me is, if I weren't working on Mercor, I would have just graduated college a couple months ago," said Hiremath.
Foody, Hiremath, and Midha founded Mercor in 2023 with the goal of connecting Indian engineers with US companies seeking freelance coders. They developed a recruiting platform featuring AI avatar interviews, but soon discovered a demand for data labeling, pairing expert contractors with AI labs like OpenAI. The trio was recognised on Forbes' 2025 Under 30 list. Mercor quickly scaled, debuting on the Forbes Cloud 100 list and reaching a $500 million annualized revenue run rate, up from $100 million in March.
The trio now join an elite circle of young tech entrepreneurs who've reached billionaire status. Their ascent comes shortly after 27-year-old Shayne Coplan, CEO of Polymarket, hit the milestone following a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to Coplan, Alexandr Wang, 28, of Scale AI, held the title for about 18 months. His co-founder, Lucy Guo, also made headlines as the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire at 30, surpassing Taylor Swift.
