Three AI prodigies started from scratch and broke the global record for the youngest billionaires.

Founders of Mercor (from left to right): Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody, and Surya Midha. Image source: ULY Inc. for Mercor

The latest valuation of AI recruitment startup Mercor has reached the milestone of $10 billion. Its three founders have become the youngest self-made tech billionaires in history, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg, who joined the ranks of billionaires at the age of 23 two decades ago.

Mercor is a recruitment startup that provides model training support for top AI labs in Silicon Valley. Recently, the company has created the world's youngest self-made billionaires - three founders who are only 22 years old. They became friends when they were in high school in the Bay Area and once formed a team to participate in debate competitions.

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This San Francisco startup recently announced the completion of a $350 million financing round, led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from well - known institutions such as Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood. As a result, the company's valuation has reached $10 billion.

According to Forbes' estimate, after the injection of this new capital, CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and Board Chairman Surya Midha have become the latest billionaires in the AI boom. Each of them holds approximately 22% of the company's shares.

"It's truly incredible," Foody told Forbes. "It feels so surreal. It's something we never even dared to dream of before. We couldn't have predicted this situation two years ago."

Even in Silicon Valley, which is obsessed with young talents and has been promoting young founders for decades, the youthfulness of Mercor's leadership is remarkable. All three founders are recipients of the Thiel Fellowship - a program initiated by conservative billionaire investor Peter Thiel, which provides $100,000 in funding each year to young people willing to forgo a college education. The "Three Musketeers" of Mercor have become role models for entrepreneurs in their twenties in the AI era.

"The most amazing thing for me is that if I hadn't founded Mercor, I would have just graduated from college a few months ago," Hiremath said. He studied at Harvard University for two years and dropped out after his sophomore year. "In such a short period, my life has taken a 180 - degree turn."

Recently, a number of young tech entrepreneurs have seen their personal wealth exceed $1 billion. With their new status as billionaires, the founders of Mercor have become the best among them. They have replaced Shayne Coplan, CEO of Polymarket, as the world's youngest self - made billionaires. Coplan, at the age of 27, obtained this title after the Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, injected $2 billion into his company, but he held the title for only 20 days. Before him, Alexandr Wang of Scale AI (aged 28) held the title for about 18 months. And Lucy Guo, co - founder of Scale AI, replaced Taylor Swift as the world's youngest self - made female billionaire at the age of 30.

What's even more noticeable is their youth: all three are 22 years old, younger than Mark Zuckerberg was when he first became a billionaire at 23.

The youngest of the three co - founders is Midha, whose birthday is in June, about two months younger than the other two. Only Kylie Jenner was younger than them when she became a self - made billionaire (she was 21 at the time), but Forbes later revised down her wealth estimate and, after investigation, pointed out that the beauty mogul had exaggerated the revenue of her cosmetics company, Kylie Cosmetics.

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Foody, Hiremath, and Midha founded Mercor in 2023 with the initial mission of building a bridge between Indian engineers and American companies in need of freelance programmers.

They created a recruitment platform where job seekers can participate in interviews through AI avatars, and the platform matches them with companies in need of talent. In the process, they accidentally entered the booming data annotation field, connecting professional contractors such as doctors and lawyers with cutting - edge labs like OpenAI. All three were included in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2025, and the company also made its debut on the Forbes Cloud 100 list, which ranks top non - listed cloud computing companies, in September. Shortly after that, Foody announced that the company's annualized revenue had reached $500 million, a significant increase from $100 million in March.

In the months before the news of this financing round, the data annotation industry underwent significant changes.

In June, Meta announced that it would acquire a 49% stake in industry giant Scale AI for $14 billion and poached its star CEO, Alexandr Wang. After this significant news, smaller industry players were inspired and seized the opportunity - they believed that cutting - edge labs would no longer be willing to cooperate with a supplier deeply tied to Meta and its AI ambitions. Meanwhile, other competitors remained strong: Surge, an established company founded in 2016, is in talks for a new round of financing, with a potential valuation of $30 billion, and its founder, Edwin Chen, has become the youngest billionaire on Forbes' list of American billionaires; Turing AI, valued at $2.2 billion, completed a $110 million financing round in July; and Invisible, a small company valued at $500 million in 2023, has become the preferred partner of OpenAI and Microsoft.

But the intensifying competition has also led to disputes.

In September, Scale filed a lawsuit against Mercor, accusing it of stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit also involves a former executive who left Scale to join Mercor and is alleged to have shared more than 100 confidential documents with his new employer. When asked about this lawsuit, Foody said, "This isn't something worth spending too much time thinking about."

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Foody and his two partners were all born in the Bay Area and grew up in a tech - rich environment. Their parents are all software engineers. Foody's mother once worked on Meta's real estate team, and his father founded a graphical interface company in the 1990s and later became a startup consultant. He started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 16 in high school. One of his projects was to help friends get discounts on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud - computing platform of e - commerce giant Amazon, charging $500 per person.

Hiremath and Midha were childhood friends, meeting each other in a primary - school debate competition at the age of 10 (they got to know Foody in the high - school debate team). While studying at Harvard University, Hiremath assisted former Treasury Secretary and current OpenAI board member Larry Summers in his research, which sparked his interest in the labor market. Summers later also participated in Mercor's investment.

After becoming new billionaires, the three founders said they haven't indulged themselves by buying flashy things to reward themselves - because they simply don't have the time. "I usually get off work around 10:30 p.m. and work six days a week," Foody said. "So apart from work, I don't have much time to focus on other trivial matters."

This article is translated from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2025/10/30/mercor-youngest-self-made-billionaires/

Original title: "The World's Youngest Self - Made Billionaires: Three 22 - Year - Old AI Founders"

This article is from the WeChat public account “Forbes” (ID: forbes_china). Author: Richard Nieva; Translator: Lemin. Republished by 36Kr with permission.