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San Francisco-based Mercor, an AI recruiting startup, has raised $100 million in a Series B round. The investment was led by Menlo Park-based Felicis alongside participation from existing investors Benchmark, General Catalyst, and DST Global. This round values Mercor at $2 billion, which is eight times its previous valuation of $250 million after it secured $30 million last year.
The fresh capital will allow Mercor to invest further on the supply side of its marketplace and to develop the company’s AI technologies that vet candidates and enhance predictions.
The youth-led revolution in tech
Mercor was founded in 2023 by three 21-year-old Peter Thiel Fellows – Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, former high school classmates and debate partners. They saw a growing demand for AI talent and a fragmented hiring process. Initially, they connected engineers in India with startups needing freelance coding help. What started as a small matchmaking service quickly gained traction, generating $1 million in revenue within months.
The trio then saw the potential to scale using AI, automating the hiring process through machine learning. Their bold decision to drop out of college and pursue Mercor full-time has now turned a side project into a $2 billion disruptor.
AI-driven recruitment
Mercor operates as an AI-driven hiring platform that automates the recruitment process for AI-focused roles. Initially a human-led job-matching service, it has evolved into a tech-powered system that utilises large language models to assess candidates. Applicants upload resumes and undergo a 20-minute AI-led video interview, split between experience-based questions and a case study. The AI processes this data to match candidates with job openings in its marketplace.
For specialised roles, a tailored AI interview ensures precise candidate selection. By leveraging AI, Mercor streamlines hiring, making recruitment faster, more scalable, and highly targeted for the evolving AI-driven job market. The company trains AI models to make hiring decisions similarly to how a human would review a resume, conduct interviews and make recommendations.
The result is a faster, more efficient system that connects companies with the right talent in a fraction of the usual time. Since its launch, Mercor has processed 300,000 candidates and conducted more than 100,000 interviews.
A bold bet on AI and the future of hiring
Mercor’s rapid rise is not just about its valuation but about how the company is fundamentally changing recruitment. Traditional hiring methods often rely on manual resume screening, recruiter intuition, and lengthy interview processes. Mercor is flipping the script by integrating AI at every step. Its proprietary large language model analyses candidate data, automates interviews, and provides AI-driven job matches.
“We collect performance data on candidates and use it to refine our predictions on who will perform best in the future,” said Mercor CEO Brendan Foody. “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. That means the way people work is changing as we move toward a more fractional, gig-like work model.”