On the world stage of technology, three 22-year-old entrepreneurs have beaten the record of Mark Zuckerberg to become the youngest self-made billionaires. The remarkable feat includes two of the trio being desi, the new wave of young Indian-American innovators conquering Silicon Valley’s elite circles.
The three people who founded Mercor, an AI-driven recruiting startup, are Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha.
From high school friends to founders
The three of them first met each other as friends, and later also became teammates in debate at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, which they all attended. Hiremath and Midha, both Indian-Americans with their families coming from Karnataka and New Delhi, respectively, started to share their dreams and their debating skills.
After high school, Foody went to Georgetown University, Hiremath took computer science at Harvard, and Midha chose foreign service at Georgetown. Even though they were in different universities, their entrepreneurial spirit was the reason they met again.
Still sophomore students, they launched Mercor in 2023 with a dream of a platform that would change the future of work.
Funding their dream
Mercor is an AI-enabled job market that is intended to facilitate the connection of skilled professionals with potential employers and at the same time feed AI models with real-world job data. The potential of the company didn't take long to be noticed by the major players in Silicon Valley.
Using their innovative tech and vision, Mercor was able to raise $350 million in Series C funding. The funding stage had set the company's valuation at a whopping $10 billion.
Explosive growth and market impact
The startup has achieved its goal rapidly and its rise has been likened to that of a comet.
Each of the founders is holding around 22% of Mercor which has made them billionaires practically overnight and as a result, they each have a net worth of more than $2 billion.
To help recruiting and training, the founders' AI recruiting platform has been used by some of the largest AI labs in Silicon Valley, thus, they have become the most prominent recent youth entrepreneurs, with Forbes naming them the youngest self-made tech billionaires of all time- the record which Zuckerberg held when he was 23 and made the list in 2008.
These visionary young founders of a new era not only demonstrate how AI technology can be a driver for innovation but also point out how Indian-origin entrepreneurs are playing an increasingly important role in shaping the future of global tech industries.
The founders of Mercor and their journey is a strong example which emphatically supports the idea that the combination of teamwork, state-of-the-art technology, and daring vision can shake up the established order and pave the way for the creation of the new legends in the business and tech world.
