COLD START / catalog / c/mercorretrieved 2026-06-03T04:31 UTC · 27 sources read

Mercor

Mercor matches domain experts — engineers, doctors, lawyers, bankers — with AI labs that pay them to train and evaluate frontier models.

mercor.com · San Francisco

CALL NO.CS·MERCOR·26

StageSeries COctober 2025[13]

Raised$484Mdisclosed rounds[13]

Headcount6600as of Jun 2026[13]

Valuationnot publicly disclosedno source in ledger

Founded2023[1][10][11]

Money

Raised $484M across disclosed rounds.[13]

Series C closed October 2025.[13]

Round size, post-money valuation, and the full investor list are not publicly disclosed.

People

Brendan Foody, CEO, Co-Founder[12][8]

Adarsh Hiremath, CTO, Co-Founder[12][8]

Surya Midha, COO, Co-Founder[12][8]

Chirag Mahapatra, Director of Engineering[10]

Braden Holstege, VP, Enterprise AI[10]

Aksh Garg, Head of Evaluation[10]

Dana Stocking, Head of Information Technology[10]

Arianna Usher, AI Product Owner[10]

Signals

May 27 2026newsWhen you go from $2 million a month to $2 million a day company claim, not independently confirmed[14]

May 21 2026news🌊 How Mercor Hit $1B ARR in 20 Months: Growth Playbook[17]

Apr 1 2026newsStripe becomes the financial backbone for Mercor’s $10B AI expert marketplace – PR Fintech[16]

Mar 26 2026newsIntroducing Mercor Enterprise AI | Mercor Blog company claim, not independently confirmed[18]

Jan 10 2024hiringIntroducing Mercor: Redefining Hiring With AI company claim, not independently confirmed[15]

Comps

Scale AI · scale.com · Same buyer (OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft), same workflow (domain-expert contractors performing data labeling and model evaluation for AI labs), and named as a direct competitor — Scale AI sued Mercor for misappropriation of trade secrets.[6]

Outlier AI · outlier.ai · Same buyer (AI labs), same workflow (expert contractors for AI post-training tasks), and named as a direct talent-source overlap in Mercor Intelligence's LinkedIn workforce data — Outlier AI is the top source of Mercor's contractor talent.[7]

DataAnnotation · dataannotation.tech · Same workflow (freelance expert contractors for AI training data and evaluation), same buyer pool (AI labs), and named as a direct talent-source and alumni destination in Mercor Intelligence's LinkedIn workforce data.[7]

micro1 · micro1.ai · Same workflow (AI-powered matching of vetted experts to tech buyers), same contractor supply pool — micro1 is both a top talent source and top alumni destination for Mercor's workforce, indicating direct head-to-head competition for the same contractors.[7]

Alignerr · alignerr.com · Same buyer (AI labs), same workflow (domain expert evaluation and RLHF-style tasks for AI post-training), and named as both a talent source and alumni destination in Mercor Intelligence's LinkedIn workforce data.[7]

Risk

The customer proof is company-sourced only. No independent source in this ledger confirms it.[14]

Next question

Ask for one referenceable production customer.

Not a recommendation. The first thing this ledger cannot answer.

Investor Lens

Why care

The case

What to learn next

Pay attention to

How it wins

Filled in the side panel for invited readers. This card carries sourced facts only.