Today Indian people are achieving new heights in every field. Three desi friends living in Silicon Valley have also done a similar feat. Have you ever wondered what the future of work would be like for the three guys on the high school debate team who debated all night long? One day he will become the world’s youngest billionaire and will oust America’s Mark Zuckerberg with his desi mind.
This is not a Bollywood script, but the true story of two desi heroes of Silicon Valley, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha. At the age of just 22, both of them, along with their third friend Brendan Foody, created a new history by becoming among the world’s youngest billionaires. The valuation of their company Mercor has reached $10 billion, taking the net worth of all three to above $2.2 billion.
Mercor launched with one lakh dollars
In Mercor company, Brandon is the CEO, Hiremath is the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Midha is the (Chairman). Hiremath’s parents are residents of Kolkata, while Midha’s family used to live in New Delhi. The trio’s story began at Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys Jesuit school in San Jose, where they connected while preparing for national debate competitions. They used to debate all night long about what the future of work would be.
After high school, all three of them went to different universities for further studies. Brendan Foody went to Georgetown for economics, Hiremath went to Harvard for computer science, and Midha went to Georgetown for foreign service. However, later a Silicon Valley startup brought all three together again. In early 2023, while still in her second year of college, she launched Mercor with $100,000 she received from a Thiel Fellowship.
Company’s annual income is 500 million dollars
Their initial idea was to connect India’s abundance of coders with American startups, but the need for a ‘human-in-the-loop’ for AI models like ChatGPT changed everything. Mercor is an AI-powered platform that automates the recruitment process, i.e. connecting companies with the right people. There are now more than 30,000 experts from around the world like doctors, lawyers, engineers and finance experts on this platform. These people help in preparing data, training AI models and taking decisions that the machine itself cannot make.
The speed of funding of the company is like a rocket. A $32 million Series A in September 2024 took the valuation to $250 million. A $100 million Series B took it to $2 billion in February 2025, and a $350 million Series C took it to $10 billion this week. By mid-2024, the company’s annual revenue was $500 million, up from just $100 million a few months ago.
Mercor will create the world’s job hub
When Meta Company bought Mercor’s rival ‘Scale AI’ for $14.3 billion, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other big tech giants now turned to Mercor, which further accelerated Mercor’s growth. Adarsh Hiremath, who left computer science at Harvard, says that by 2035 we will seamlessly connect every person to every job, a kind of global job market.
The average age of their 30-member team is also 22 years. Thousands of coders, doctors and researchers from India are today working for giants like OpenAI through Mercor. Zuckerberg got $1 billion at the age of 23, while the Mercor trio earned more than $2.2 billion at the age of 22. He accomplished this feat in just two years. This is not just a story, but an example of bringing local talent to the global stage. This desi mind has not stopped yet, it will perform even greater wonders in the coming years.
