Three 22-Year-Old Friends Become World's Youngest Self-Made Billionaires with AI Recruiting Platform Mercor

Meet the three 22-year-old Indian Americans who are now the world's youngest self-made billionaires, breaking Mark Zuckerberg's record

Three 22-year-old Silicon Valley friends, including two Indian-Americans, have become the world's youngest self-made billionaires. Their AI recruiting platform, Mercor, secured $350 million in funding, valuing the company at $10 billion. This achievement surpasses Mark Zuckerberg's record, with each founder now holding over $2 billion in net worth. Three childhood friends from Silicon Valley -- Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha -- have become the world's youngest self-made billionaires at just 22. The trio, who co-founded the San Francisco-based AI hiring platform Mercor, reached the milestone after the startup raised $350 million in new funding, pushing its valuation to $10 billion and surpassing Mark Zuckerberg's record of becoming a billionaire at 23. Together, the three founders hold roughly 22% of the company's equity, giving each a net worth of over $2 billion. Foody serves as CEO, Hiremath -- whose parents hail from Karnataka -- leads as CTO, and Midha -- whose family is from New Delhi -- chairs the board. Their entrepreneurial journey began at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, where they bonded over late-night debates and a shared curiosity about the future of work. After high school, the trio attended top universities: Foody studied economics at Georgetown, Hiremath pursued computer science at Harvard, and Midha focused on foreign service at Georgetown. Despite being at different campuses, they reunited through their shared interest in Silicon Valley's startup ecosystem. In 2023, while still undergraduates, they launched Mercor as a freelance marketplace to connect skilled software developers in India with U.S. startups seeking remote support. As artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT gained prominence, the founders pivoted the platform into an AI-driven recruiting system that automates hiring and connects global talent for specialized "human-in-the-loop" tasks -- areas where human judgment is still vital. Today, Mercor supports a network of more than 30,000 professionals across industries such as law, finance, medicine, and engineering. Its services are used by major AI players including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and several of the "Magnificent Seven" tech giants. The company itself runs with a compact team of about 30 employees, most in their early twenties. Mercor's growth has been meteoric. By mid-2024, annualized revenue soared to $500 million, up from $100 million earlier in the year. The company's rapid funding rounds -- including a $32 million Series A in September 2024 and a $100 million Series B in February 2025 -- quickly boosted its valuation to $2 billion, earning it the reputation of being Silicon Valley's fastest-growing startup. Momentum accelerated further after Meta acquired rival Scale AI for $14.3 billion, allowing Mercor to position itself as a neutral alternative for major AI labs. The latest $350 million Series C round now places the three founders among the world's youngest billionaires. All three are recipients of the Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant awarded to young entrepreneurs who choose to leave college and build companies full-time. Hiremath says their long-term goal is to create a global, AI-enabled labor marketplace that can seamlessly match people with work opportunities by 2035. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)

Three 22-year-olds dethrone Polymarket CEO to become world's youngest billionaires after AI startup hits $10B - VnExpress International

Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, three 22-year-old high school friends in the U.S., have become the world's youngest self-made billionaires after their AI startup Mercor reached a US$10 billion valuation. Mercor, a recruiting startup that helps Silicon Valley's leading AI labs train their models, secured a $350 million funding round led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood Ventures earlier this week. The new investment has made CEO Foody, CTO Hiremath, and board chairman Midha the latest billionaires of the AI boom, each holding roughly a 22% stake in the company, according to Forbes estimates. The Mercor founders dethroned Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, 27, who held the title of the world's youngest self-made billionaire for just 20 days after a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. Before Coplan, Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, 28, held the title for about 18 months. "It's definitely crazy," Foody told Forbes. "It feels very surreal. Obviously beyond our wildest imaginations, insofar as anything that we could have anticipated two years ago." All three grew up in the Bay Area as children of software engineers. Hiremath and Midha met at age 10 through elementary school debate tournaments and later met Foody in high school debate. The trio are Thiel Fellows, recipients of billionaire investor Peter Thiel's $200,000 fellowship that supports young entrepreneurs who skip or leave college to build startups. Past Thiel Fellows include Figma CEO Dylan Field, whose design software company reached a $70 billion market cap after shares surged 333% post-listing, and the world's youngest self-made female billionaire Lucy Guo, Fortune reported. "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, who dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year. "My life did such a 180 in such a short period of time." Despite their newfound wealth, the founders say they have not splurged on luxury items due to their demanding schedules. Foody said he usually leaves the office around 10:30 p.m., working six days a week. "And so there's not a whole lot of time outside of that to be distracted by things outside of the business." Founded in 2023, Mercor initially aimed to connect engineers in India with U.S. companies seeking freelance coders. Its platform enables candidates to interview with AI avatars before being matched with employers. In expanding this system, the company entered the competitive data labeling sector and later faced a lawsuit from Wang's Scale AI, which accused the startup of stealing trade secrets. "It's not something we spend a lot of time thinking about," Foody said.

Two Indian-origin guys are youngest billionaires in the world: Here's their crazy AI story

When Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha met in high school in San Jose, California, they were known for their sharp arguments, not startup pitches. Along with their friend Brendan Foody, the two Indian-origin teens from Bellarmine College Preparatory went on to do something no one in their class could've imagined - build a company worth $10 billion by the age of 22. Their startup, Mercor, just made the trio the world's youngest self-made billionaires, overtaking even Mark Zuckerberg, who hit the milestone at 23. Backed by top Silicon Valley investors, the company raised $350 million in its latest funding round, valuing it at ten billion dollars and instantly propelling the founders into billionaire territory. Also read: CALM: The model that thinks in ideas, not tokens But what exactly does Mercor do and how did three college dropouts from California's Bay Area pull it off? Unlike most AI startups obsessed with building smarter algorithms, Mercor found success by focusing on something else: the humans behind the machine. The company runs a "human-in-the-loop" platform that connects skilled individuals - engineers, doctors, analysts, and even content specialists - with AI labs and companies that need help training their models. Think of it as Upwork for AI, but on a global scale. Every time an AI model needs human judgment, whether it's identifying objects in an image or assessing the accuracy of a medical dataset, Mercor steps in to supply vetted human talent. The company reportedly pays over $1.5 million a day to contractors around the world who train AI systems for tech giants and startups alike. Also read: Google vs Epic Games lawsuit: Google agrees to global changes in Android app distribution and payment systems That model has made Mercor the quiet backbone of the AI boom, proving that even in an age of automation, human intelligence is still essential. As one investor put it, "Mercor built the invisible workforce that powers artificial intelligence." Hiremath, Midha, and Foody were part of the Thiel Fellowship, a program founded by investor Peter Thiel that gives young entrepreneurs $100,000 to skip college and build companies. What started as a small idea about matching coders to AI labs evolved into a full-blown recruitment and data-labeling ecosystem. Today, Mercor sits at the heart of the AI infrastructure race not by creating models like OpenAI or Anthropic, but by training them. And its founders are clear about what comes next: expanding access so that anyone, anywhere, can earn by helping AI learn. In a world racing toward automation, Mercor's billionaires are betting on the one thing AI can't replace: people.