founder / co-ceo @mercor_ai, prev @harvard
San Francisco, CA
- Tweets 126
- Following 586
- Followers 7,090
- Likes 717
Pinned Tweet
Traditional coding benchmarks do not reflect how software is actually built and maintained.
That's why we built a new benchmark, APEX-SWE, in partnership with @cognition. It measures whether AI models can perform complex, real-world software engineering work to ship systems that work and debug them when they don't.
@OpenAI GPT 5.3 Codex (High) tops the leaderboard at 41.5% on Pass@1.
130
138
803
208,836
became a thiel fellow today
ok back to coding
Welcome to the Fellowship! businesswire.com/news/home/2…
46
9
700
214,320
A year ago, our entire company fit into one conference room.
Now, we’ve moved offices twice to keep up with our growth. We’re a team of more than 300 people globally, across engineering, product, and operations. I’m proud of how far we’ve come, and even more energized about where we’re going.
This raise wasn’t out of necessity. Mercor is profitable and operating from strength. The round was driven by inbound investor interest, and we closed it in 5 days.
We’re hiring across nearly every function. Join us: mercor.com/careers
We’ve raised our $350M Series C at a $10B valuation from @felicis, @benchmark, and @generalcatalyst.
Just 2 years after starting, Mercor is paying $1.5 million per day to experts in our marketplace.
We’re creating a new category of work in the AI economy, where software engineers, bankers, lawyers, and other professionals earn based on their experience while advancing the frontier of AI.
While most new categories take time to build momentum, we’ve broken every growth record. For comparison, in their first 2 years:
- Uber paid out just over a $1 million to drivers
- Airbnb paid out $10 million to hosts
We are unlocking human potential in the AI economy.
34
33
396
299,919
I first met Surya when I was 10 years old. We were the only elementary schoolers who wanted to compete in high school speech and debate tournaments together, so we very quickly became friends. Throughout middle school, Surya and I debated each other several times in a 1v1 debate format called Lincoln Douglas. I will never forgive him for eliminating me from the Middle School State Championship, but I guess that’s to be expected when you have to compete against somebody as persuasive as Surya.
In high school, Surya and I joined forces as debate partners, where we competed together in Policy Debate. I like to describe this as my first “startup,” since Surya and I had 50-50 equity in each other’s success and went through a series of emotional highs and lows at the major national debate tournaments. When high school passed, it was almost assumed that Surya and I would work together in some capacity. Fast forward two years, and Mercor was born.
Surya, Brendan, and I dropped out together, moved to New York (mistake), and then finally ended up in San Francisco. Shortly after, we discovered the human data market, and started building a product and operations team to solve what we believed was ultimately a talent assessment problem.
Believe it or not, Surya was the first Strategic Project Lead at Mercor. His very playbook ultimately became the groundwork for the SPL role itself. He individually recruited and mentored the earliest SPL joiners of the team.
During his time at Mercor, Surya was the invisible hand that kept the company running. Before we had automated our payments system, Surya would manually generate a spreadsheet and issue every payment himself. Surya was our point person for all legal matters. Surya’s recruiting efforts have directly resulted in several dozen SPLs joining the team. Surya was in the weeds of every single one of our initial human data projects, ensuring that we nailed pilots with speed and quality.
There would be no Mercor without Surya.
I feel a sense of loss that I won’t see Surya on a daily basis. But, I am excited for all that is ahead. As Chairman, Surya will be supporting Mercor on all matters of strategic importance.
Thank you Surya for the early years and setting us up to take the company to the next level. Q3 was our best quarter yet, and based on the early signs in October, Q4 will be even stronger. I feel very confident about our company's future.
I write this out of gratitude. Surya has been my role model, thought partner, and most importantly, best friend. For the past 3 years, I have spent 14+ hours a day, 7 days a week with Surya. I have seen Surya grow up since he was an annoying, socially awkward 5th grader. I will have spent more time with Surya than my future wife by the time I get married. Going to Bluestone Lane with Surya every morning was the highlight of my days. Surya, I will miss you deeply. Thank you for everything you’ve done to build this company.
last week, I shared with the mercor team that I’ll be transitioning into a new role as chairman of the board and stepping away from my position as chief operating officer.
mercor has been the defining journey of my life. I first met adarsh when I was 10 and brendan when I was 14, back on our high school debate team. years later, after our sophomore year of college, we took a leap of faith and started mercor out of a tiny palo alto office barely larger than a conference room. none of us could have imagined the scale and impact the company would achieve in such a short time.
this decision comes from a place of conviction, not doubt. I believe in our mission more deeply than ever and have complete faith in the team to carry mercor into its next chapter.
15
9
379
97,636
thank you for having me @HarryStebbings @20vcFund !
Very rarely will I do an exclusive on a company funding round.
But simply put, @Mercor_ai is unlike any other.
💰 100M funding round at 2BN price in 24 months.
💪 Most intense culture in silicon valley. 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
🏦 70M in ARR in 2 years
👶 Average age of employee 22
There is nothing conventional about this story.
My 6 key takeaways with @adarsh_exe👇
16
4
195
29,158
we only recommended these hours to keep people from working Sundays too
If speed is the most important element in startup success. @mercor_ai will win.
They work 9-9-6.
That is 9AM-9PM, 6 days per week.
The average age of Mercor employee… 22.
Insanely good.
4
3
160
49,766
i've enjoyed every second of building this company with @BrendanFoody and @suryamidha
solving labor matching with models that granularly understand the tasks humans should be doing will change the world
grateful for @victoralazarte and @billgurley at @benchmark, all of our investors, and most of all, the mercor team ❤️
Mercor is solving global labor matching with models that understand human ability.
@mercor_ai raised a $30M Series A at a $250M valuation, led by @victoralazarte and @bgurley at @benchmark, with participation from @peterthiel, @jack, @adamdangelo, and @LHSummers.
12
8
119
26,815
more jobs 🔜
Mercor is solving talent allocation in the AI economy.
The difference between greatness and failure is the right person being in the right place at the right time. Putting them there is the hardest unsolved problem in capitalism.
We’re excited to announce our $100M Series B at a $2B valuation from @felicis, @generalcatalyst, @benchmark, DST and @MenloVentures.
5
4
108
19,176
Hiremaths on 🔝
Get this asked once a month. Yes @adarsh_exe and I are related. We are cousins building the Hiremath dynasty together.
6
4
81
30,068
looking forward to the long partnership ahead
The meteoric rise of @mercor_ai becomes clear once you meet the founders. I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined their board and will be working closely with them alongside Sundeep Jain, who brings exceptional marketplace expertise. They’ve quickly established themselves as the go-to provider for top AI companies, delivering unmatched speed and quality
2
1
55
11,924
@mercor_ai is the easiest way to hire
we’ve created over 500 jobs in the last month, have users from 123 countries, and work with some of the largest Silicon Valley AI companies 🚀
we just launched our new platform. check it out at team.mercor.com
4
7
49
16,848
still remember when i first hopped on a call with @pranavravella @RonNachum and @AryaGrayeli at midnight to help them prepare for their Neo interview
since then, they've blown me away with their execution speed, hustle, and relentless focus on delighting customers. these close-knit high school friends are a truly special team. congrats on the announcement!
Can AI run a company? We raised an $8.7M seed led by @generalcatalyst and top tech & finance angels to prove it can.
At @sapienai, we’re building autonomous financial analysts redefining enterprise finance—already saving thousands of hours and catching multi-million-$ mistakes
2
2
45
13,528
nobody has ever made money betting against @UbertiGavin @robertwachen and @czhu1729
congrats on the $120M series A!
Meet Sohu, the fastest AI chip of all time.
With over 500,000 tokens per second running Llama 70B, Sohu lets you build products that are impossible on GPUs. One 8xSohu server replaces 160 H100s.
Sohu is the first specialized chip (ASIC) for transformer models. By specializing, we get way more performance: Sohu can’t run CNNs, LSTMs, SSMs, or any other AI models.
Today, every major AI product (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Sora) is powered by transformers. Within a few years, every large AI model will run on custom chips.
Here’s why specialized chips are inevitable:
1
26
7,192
It's been a journey building @mercor_ai with such an amazing team!
So excited for what's to come 🚀
Today, we're announcing $3.6M in funding and the launch of our platform, which uses AI to assess and match talent with companies. Our round is led by @generalcatalyst and includes participation from @ScottDSandell (CEO of NEA), @Soma_Capital, @Link_Ventures, and others.
4
5
27
4,613
society if everyone spent more time actually being productive instead of obsessing over the newest productivity tool
2
1
22
2,841
the only negative memory i have about this time period is exclusively eating proper food for every meal
7
267
thank you for everything khushi i’m beyond lucky to call you one of my closest friends. none of this would’ve been possible without you. always rooting for you and definitely going to miss the energy you bring to the office when you move on to investing
1
7
1,693
You can simultaneously recognize that America retains geopolitical heft and that elements of the domestic social fabric are undesirable…
1
2
214
Tried this exact approach with Google’s STT instead of Whisper. Couldn’t get latency below 1.5 seconds.
Using Llama is also usually slower than just streaming the GPT response directly.
1
1
326