At an age when their peers are sending out resumes and hunting for jobs, three 22-year-old college dropouts are celebrating their status as the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. The co-founders of AI recruitment startup Mercor—CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath and Board Chairman Surya Midha—gained their newfound status after a recent $350 million Series C funding round that valued the San Francisco-based company at $10 billion. They unseat Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who became a billionaire at the age of 23.
The company’s origins lie in late-night debate preparations. School friends and debate champions Hiremath and Midha, both Indian-Americans, studied at Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys school in San Jose, California. According to Midha’s website, their debate team was the first ever to win all three major national tournaments: the Tournament of Champions (TOC), the National Debate Coaches Association Tournament (NDCA), and the National Speech and Debate Association Tournament (NSDA). The duo met Foody at a debate competition, and their collaboration continued even as they scattered for college—Hiremath to Harvard (computer science), and Foody and Midha to Georgetown.
The initial concept of Mercor, launched in 2023 by Hiremath and Midha, was to connect talented developers, particularly from India, with US companies looking for coders. However, with the rise of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Mercor pivoted to focus on providing “human-in-the-loop” services—using AI to match expert contractors across fields like law, medicine, and engineering to refine and train foundational AI models for top labs. Their client list now includes powerhouses like OpenAI, and Google DeepMind.
The company’s growth has been rapid. After securing $32 million in Series A funding in September 2024, Mercor raised another $100 million in Series B in January 2025, which gave the startup a $2 billion valuation. The recent $350 million Series C, led by Felicis Ventures, catapulted their valuation to $10 billion. According to reports, the three founders each hold about 22 percent stake, pushing their net worth beyond the billion-dollar mark. The company manages a network of over 30,000 contractors, reporting average hourly earnings of $85. The three come from families of software engineers and are all recipients of the Thiel Fellowship, a grant of $200,000 for 2 years set up by billionaire Peter Thiel for young minds dropping out of college “to build new things”.
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The acquisition of a key rival, Scale AI by Meta created a void, positioning Mercor as the alternative for AI labs. Despite this favourable market shift, Mercor’s relationship with its former rival was contentious as Scale AI sued Mercor late last year on charges of stealing trade secrets.
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The Mercor founders, who were part of the Forbes 2025 30-under-30 list, surpass other young billionaires, according to Forbes, as of October 31, 2025: Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, 27, held the position of being the youngest billionaire for only 20 days; before Coplan, Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, 28, held the position for about 18 months, while his co-founder, Lucy Guo, 30, became the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire, taking the title from Taylor Swift.
After becoming the youngest self-made billionaires ever, Foody told Forbes last week: “It feels very surreal. Obviously beyond our wildest imaginations, insofar as anything that we could have anticipated two years ago.”
