In a stunning testament to the boom in Artificial Intelligence (AI), three 22-year-old friends – Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha from Silicon Valley have officially become the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.
This staggering feat was achieved by the co-founders of the San Francisco-based AI recruiting platform, Mercor, after the company recently secured a massive $350 million funding round. The deal valued Mercor at an impressive $10 billion.
This milestone is particularly notable as it successfully dethrones Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who previously became a billionaire at age 23.
The Debate Team That Defined the Future of Work
The three founders—Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha—share a unique history, bonding over high-stakes competition long before Mercor was born. Their journey began at Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys Jesuit school in San Jose, where they were teammates on the high school debate team.
Their nights were spent preparing for national debate tournaments, a rigorous process that instilled skills like rapid-fire analysis and persuasive logic—traits that would later form the bedrock of their entrepreneurial success. As CEO Brendan Foody recalled, “We were always arguing about the future of work”.
Indian-Origin Youngest Billionaires
After high school, the friends temporarily separated to attend elite universities: Foody went to Georgetown for economics, Hiremath to Harvard for computer science, and Midha to Georgetown for foreign service.
Both Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha are Indian-Americans. Hiremath’s parents emigrated from Karnataka, and Midha’s parents emigrated from New Delhi, India. Midha, in particular, was highly decorated in policy debate, becoming part of the first team in history to win all three national tournaments (TOC, NDCA, and NSDA).
However, the start-up siren call of Silicon Valley reunited them in 2023 when they launched Mercor during their sophomore years.
Mercor’s Explosive AI Pivot
Founded in 2023, Mercor initially started as a simple online freelance marketplace. The goal was to bridge the talent gap by connecting skilled software engineers in India with U.S. startups seeking remote development help. A standout feature was its recruiting platform, which allowed applicants to interview using AI avatars, matching them to projects based on skill alignment.
The company soon pivoted, fueled by the explosive, unexpected demand for “human-in-the-loop” services needed to refine foundational AI models like ChatGPT. Mercor rapidly evolved into an AI-powered platform that automates recruitment while managing a global network of vetted contractors.
Today, Mercor boasts over 30,000 specialists worldwide. These professionals, ranging from lawyers and doctors to finance and engineering experts, are paid to label data, simulate scenarios, and provide the nuanced human judgment that algorithms cannot replicate. Mercor now serves major AI labs and tech giants, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and six of the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants, helping them source the talent needed to turn raw compute into smarter AI.
The Billion-Dollar Valuation and Record-Breaking Status
The founders achieved their self-made billionaire status thanks to a recent $350 million Series C infusion, which resulted in the company’s $10 billion valuation. This valuation means each of the three co-founders, who reportedly hold roughly 22 percent stakes, possesses a net worth exceeding $2 billion.
The Mercor leadership team includes Brendan Foody as CEO, Adarsh Hiremath as CTO, and Surya Midha as board chairman.
Their journey was significantly accelerated by the Thiel Fellowship, a program that provides a $100,000 grant to young innovators in exchange for skipping or dropping out of college to build companies. Hiremath, for instance, left Harvard after his sophomore year. The growth has been called “dizzying”. Mercor hit $500 million in annualized revenue by mid-2024, a major leap from $100 million just months earlier.
Their rapid funding rounds have been record-breaking:
- September 2024: $32 million Series A valued them at $250 million.
- February 2025: $100 million Series B sent the valuation soaring to $2 billion.
- This Week (Late 2025): $350 million Series C secured the $10 billion valuation and billionaire status.
This success makes them younger than Mark Zuckerberg when he first crossed the billionaire mark at age 23. Furthermore, they surpassed Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who briefly held the title at 27.
High Stakes and the Path Ahead
The competitive landscape of the data labeling industry intensified when Meta announced a massive $14.3 billion acquisition of Mercor’s main rival, Scale AI, in June. This bombshell move ultimately benefited Mercor, as major AI labs like OpenAI and DeepMind, wary of working with a vendor now tied up with Meta’s own AI ambitions, turned en masse to Mercor for a neutral alternative.
Despite the phenomenal success and sudden wealth, the founders have little time for distraction. The operation is lean, run by a 30-person team whose median age is just 22. Hiremath’s long-term vision for Mercor by 2035 is ambitious: to build a unified global labor marketplace that matches every person to every job or task seamlessly.
According to CEO Foody, their commitment to the business is relentless. He noted that he leaves the office around 10:30 p.m. on an average day, six days a week, leaving little time to purchase anything flashy.
More About the Co-founders
Brendan Foody: The CEO
Brendan Foody, the CEO of Mercor, is the quintessential Bay Area builder, whose journey began not in a classroom, but with code. While his friends were mastering the art of debate, Brendan, who is reportedly dyslexic, found his calling in entrepreneurship and engineering. He had been coding since the third grade, and in high school, he bootstrapped his first company—a cloud consulting service that helped startups secure AWS credits for a fee.
This early venture, born from spotting a financial arbitrage opportunity, gave him an intense early exposure to business operations and profitability. Though he enrolled at Georgetown University to study Economics, he dropped out to focus fully on Mercor. This decisive move, which earned him the prestigious Thiel Fellowship alongside his co-founders, solidified his commitment to building what has become one of the world’s fastest-growing AI companies. He epitomizes the “builder” mindset, focused on the product and the explosive growth that followed.
Adarsh Hiremath: The CTO
Adarsh Hiremath, Mercor’s Chief Technology Officer, is a force that embodies both intellectual rigor and high-speed execution. His foundational years were marked by intense, high-stakes competition as a world-class policy debater at Bellarmine College Preparatory. His partnership with Surya Midha made history, as they were the first team ever to win all three major national policy debate tournaments in a single year. These skills—rapid-fire analysis, logical structure, and relentless research—directly translate to the strategic execution required of a CTO.
He took his competitive spirit to Harvard University, enrolling in a concurrent Bachelor’s/Master’s program in Computer Science. Yet, the gravity of the opportunity with Mercor pulled him away. During his sophomore year, he made the monumental decision to drop out, trading the hallowed halls of Harvard for the chaotic intensity of a rapidly scaling startup. As he put it, “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.”
Surya Midha: The Board Chairman
Surya Midha, who recently transitioned from COO to Board Chairman, brings a fascinating blend of intellectual depth and strategic foresight to the trio. Like Adarsh, his foundation was built in the crucible of competitive policy debate, where their two-man team achieved unprecedented national success. This experience armed him with the ability to analyze complex systems and articulate persuasive, long-term visions.
His academic path initially pointed toward global affairs, attending Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service to study international relations and economics. He was training to be a diplomat or global strategist, interning at institutions like the Brookings Institution. However, his vision of “labor aggregation as the greatest opportunity of the 21st century” proved too compelling. He left Georgetown to join his high-school friends, bringing his big-picture, global perspective to a company that ultimately scaled into a $10 billion platform connecting top AI labs with a global workforce.
Key Takeaways
- Three 22-year-old friends from Silicon Valley become the world’s youngest self-made billionaires through their AI recruiting platform, Mercor.
- Mercor’s success is attributed to a pivot towards “human-in-the-loop” services for refining foundational AI models.
- The founders’ background in high school debate instilled skills crucial for their entrepreneurial success.
- Mercor’s valuation reached $10 billion after a $350 million Series C funding round.
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