AI Recruiting Startup Mercor Raises $100M, Reaches $2B Valuation

AI recruiting startup Mercor nabs $100M investment at $2B valuation - SiliconANGLE

AI recruiting startup Mercor nabs $100M investment at $2B valuation Mercor Inc., a startup using artificial intelligence to streamline companies' recruiting efforts, today announced that it has raised $100 million in funding. The Series B round was led by Felicis. General Catalyst, DST Global, Benchmark and Menlo Ventures chipped in as well. Mercor is now reportedly valued at $2 billion, eight times what it was worth following a September funding round. Mercor operates an AI-powered recruiting platform with a user base of more than 300,000 professionals. Recruiters can enter a brief job description into a chatbot interface and have the platform automatically find candidates with matching skills. A recruiter at a software provider, for example, could specify that the company is seeking a Python developer with five years of TensorFlow experience. For each candidate that its algorithms surface, Mercor displays a brief summary of career achievements. It also shows other key details such as the worker's years of experience. A "Hire Instantly" button speeds up candidate onboarding by automating some of the manual work usually involved in the process. For job seekers, in turn, Mercor automates the task of sending applications to companies. The platform determines what application should be sent to which company with the help of an interview chatbot. The chatbot can customize its questions to different roles: AI developers, for example, might receive a mix of programming challenges and questions about theoretical machine learning concepts. According to TechCrunch, Mercor is used by the world's top five AI labs including OpenAI. Moreover, the company is profitable. It expects to generate a $1 million profit on $7 million in revenue this month and its top line is growing 51% quarter-over-quarter. Mercor will use the proceeds from its latest funding round to bring more professionals to its platform. It also plans to upgrade the AI systems that power the platform's core features. According to Bloomberg, the company will grow its headcount from 75 employees to 100 by year's end to support the effort. Mercor is not the only venture-backed startup using AI to streamline the recruiting workflow. Last July, Tezi Inc. raised $7 million for its automated hiring platform. The software is built around a chatbot called Max that can automatically analyze job applications to find the candidates with the most relevant skills. Recruiters can fine-tune the underlying AI models by upvoting or downvoting their suggestions.

AI hiring startup Mercor now valued at $2 billion after strong recent growth

Mercor CEO Brendan Foody on $2 billion valuation, streamlining hiring with AI AI hiring startup Mercor announced on Thursday a $100 million Series B funding round, with the company reaching a $2 billion valuation. The company was valued at $250 million just five months ago, raising $30 million in its Series A round in September. Since launching, Mercor has processed 300,000 candidates and conducted more than 100,000 interviews. "At a high level, Mercor is training models that predict how well someone will perform on a job better than a human can," CEO Brendan Foody said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Thursday morning. The company trains AI models to make hiring decisions similarly to how a human would review a resume, conduct interviews and make recommendations. Foody said the company's clients include top AI labs, but declined to confirm the names of the customers.

Mercor, an AI recruiting startup founded by 21-year-olds, raises $100M at $2B valuation | TechCrunch

Mercor, the AI recruiting startup founded by three 21-year-old Thiel Fellows, has raised $100 million in a Series B round, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Menlo Park-based Felicis led the round, valuing Mercor at $2 billion -- eight times its previous valuation, the Wall Street Journal previously reported. Existing investors Benchmark, General Catalyst, and DST Global also participated. General Catalyst had led the company's $3.6 million seed round in 2023, while Benchmark backed its $32 million Series A in 2024 at a $250 million valuation. The round makes CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and COO Surya Midha, some of the youngest founders of a billion-dollar startup. The two-year-old platform, which counts Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, and Adam D'Angelo as backers, says the latest funding will help "accelerate its ability to match billions of people with their calling, applying human talent to its highest potential." Founded in 2023, Mercor uses AI to streamline hiring. Its platform automates resume screening, candidate matching, offers AI-powered interviews, and payroll management. Employers upload job descriptions, and Mercor's system recommends the best candidates. Mercor claims its automated system not only streamlines hiring but also removes bias from the process. That claim alleges that AI systems are less biased than humans, which hasn't always proved to be true. Nevertheless, tech companies such as OpenAI are already using Mercor's automated tools, which the company claims can find better human candidates than, well, other humans. Job seekers complete a 20-minute AI interview that evaluates their skills and creates a profile. The platform then matches them with relevant full-time, part-time, or hourly roles. "We collect performance data on candidates and use it to refine our predictions on who will perform best in the future," Foody said. Mercor initially focused on hiring software engineers and tech professionals in operations, content creation, product development, and design. Software engineers are still the most in-demand talent on Mercor today, Foody said. But AI labs are increasingly seeking other professionals -- consultants, PhDs, bankers, doctors, and lawyers. To meet rising demand, Mercor has expanded its talent pool, helping HR teams evaluate 468,000 applicants. India remains its largest talent source, followed by the U.S., while Europe and South America are seeing rapid growth. This momentum has driven a sharp increase in Mercor's revenue, which it generates by charging hourly finders' fees to its clients. Last September, the startup was growing 50% month-over-month, with an annual revenue run rate (calculated by multiplying its latest monthly revenue by 12) in the "tens of millions." Maintaining that pace, it now stands at a $75 million ARR, most of which comes from AI labs. Mercor says it now works with the world's top five AI labs including OpenAI. Mercor's $2 billion valuation gives it a 27x ARR multiple, a reasonable figure compared to the more inflated valuations seen today. Some investors are willing to pay up to 50 times ARR for the fastest-growing generative AI companies. Asides from concerns about hiring bias, another debate surrounding Mercor's technology is its potential to accelerate job displacement as AI advances. Foody, however, argues that rather than displacing workers, Mercor is automating large parts of the economy, making workers even more valuable in the areas where they are still needed. According to the chief executive, Mercor helps identify jobs humans should be doing in an AI-driven economy or jobs AI can't perform -- such as training AI models, managing complex decisions, or filling creative and strategic roles. "If AI automates 90% of the economy, then humans become the bottleneck for the remaining 10%. So there's 10x leverage on every unit of economic output that humans contribute because the rest has been automated, " Foody explains. "That means the way people work is changing as we move toward a more fractional, gig-like work model." That's why the founder believes Mercor will remain relevant in the long run, as more companies prioritize expertise over tenure and hire specialists for short-term projects instead of relying on full-time staff. "I think work becomes more efficient through smarter job matching," he said. "Every project should be handled by the best person for the job, not just whoever is available on staff." As for its own hiring, Mercor, with an average team age of 22, recently hired the former Head of Human Data Operations at OpenAI and the previous Head of Growth at Scale.

AI Startup Led by 21-Year-Old Thiel Fellow Lands $2 Billion Valuation

Artificial intelligence-powered hiring startup Mercor has notched a valuation of $2 billion in a new funding round -- a massive markup for the small San Francisco-based team and the latest sign of continuing AI exuberance. The startup, which investors valued at $250 million in September, raised $100 million in the deal, which was led by Felicis, with participation from General Catalyst, DST Global, Benchmark and Menlo Ventures. Previous investors include Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey and Larry Summers.