What Mercor sells
Mercor recruits skilled professionals, many of them holders of doctorates, law degrees or Wall Street backgrounds, and pays them to train artificial intelligence models for companies including OpenAI and Meta. The San Francisco Standard reported in November 2025 that contractors on the platform earn up to $200 an hour teaching chatbots to behave like people.
The economics behind the valuation are unusual for a company this young. The Standard put Mercor at a $500 million annualised revenue run rate as of September 2025, paying contractors roughly $1.5 million a day, and profitable. Felicis Ventures led a $350 million Series C that set the $10 billion price.
Three founders, one debate team
Hiremath met his co-founders, Brendan Foody and Surya Midha, through their high-school debate team in San Jose. All three are children of software engineers. Hiremath went to Harvard; Foody and Midha went to Georgetown. In 2023 all three dropped out.
The company they built did not start where it ended up. Mercor began by connecting engineers in India with American firms looking for freelance coding talent, then pivoted to supplying human expertise for AI training when that market appeared. The pivot is the commercial decision that produced the valuation.
What being a paper billionaire means
Forbes made the ranking explicit on 30 October 2025: at 22, the three founders were the youngest self-made billionaires in the world. Hiremath's stake is reported at about 22% of the company, which at a $10 billion valuation is the arithmetic behind the headline.
It is worth being precise about what that is. The wealth is a stake in a private company valued by its most recent funding round, not cash. Private valuations move both ways, and the figure describes a moment in October 2025 rather than a bank balance.
Where Adarsh Hiremath is now
He is Mercor's chief technology officer, the technical half of a founding team whose chief executive is Foody and whose board chairman is Midha. Forbes also records him as a Thiel Fellow, the programme that funds young people to leave university for their own projects, which fits the 2023 drop-out.
No later change of role, funding round or valuation appears in the sources used here. Anyone checking this page in a year should assume the valuation figure has moved.
What is documented and what is not
Documented: Mercor's $10 billion valuation after a $350 million Series C led by Felicis; Hiremath's role as chief technology officer and his roughly 22% stake; the Forbes ranking of the three founders as the world's youngest self-made billionaires at 22; the San Jose debate-team origin; Harvard; and the 2023 drop-out.
Not documented here: his date of birth, his parents' names, his personal holdings outside Mercor, and any statement from him in his own words. The birth year on this page is derived from his reported age of 22 in late 2025.
| 인물 | 국가 | 이정표 | 나이 / 기록 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elisabeth Anisimow | 미국 | 11세에 살아있는 그림을 점당 2,500~5,000달러에 판매 | 11세 |
| Carmel Bechler | 이스라엘 | 2023년 올해의 젊은 야생동물 사진작가상 수상 | 16세 |
| Andrea Dominizi | 이탈리아 | 프레임 구석의 딱정벌레, 그 뒤의 벌목 기계, 그리고 숲 | 17세 |
| Adarsh Hiremath | 미국 | Mercor 공동 창업자; 세계 최연소 자수성가 억만장자 중 한 명 | 20세 |
| Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas | 독일 | 2024년 올해의 젊은 야생동물 사진작가상 수상 | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- Named by Forbes among the world's three youngest self-made billionaires at 22 (30 October 2025)
- Chief technology officer of Mercor, holding about 22% of the company
- Mercor valued at $10 billion after a $350m Series C led by Felicis Ventures
- Met his co-founders on a San Jose high-school debate team; dropped out of Harvard in 2023
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- Date of birth is not published; the birth year here is an estimate
- The billionaire status rests on a private valuation that can move in either direction
- No direct quotations from Hiremath appear in the sources used here
Questions people ask about Adarsh Hiremath
How old is Adarsh Hiremath?
Forbes reported him as 22 in October 2025, which puts his birth year at about 2003. No date of birth appears in these sources.
What does Mercor do?
It recruits skilled professionals to train AI models for companies including OpenAI and Meta, paying contractors up to $200 an hour.
What is Adarsh Hiremath's net worth?
Forbes ranked him among the world's youngest self-made billionaires at 22, based on a roughly 22% stake in a company valued at $10 billion. That is a private stake, not cash.
What is his role at Mercor?
Chief technology officer. Brendan Foody is chief executive and Surya Midha is board chairman.
Where did he go to university?
Harvard. He dropped out in 2023 to work on the company.
How did the founders meet?
Through their high-school debate team in San Jose. All three are children of software engineers.
Is Adarsh Hiremath on Wikipedia?
He has no article of his own in this record; searches lead to Wikipedia's article on Mercor.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Adarsh’s story?
What is Adarsh Hiremath's role at Mercor?
What does Mercor's platform do?
How did the three founders meet?
Sources
- These 22-Year-Olds Are Now The World's Youngest Self-Made Billionaires — Forbes, 2025-10-30
- San Francisco's youngest billionaires are betting on a new kind of job boom — The San Francisco Standard, 2025-11-07
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
