Mercorwhich connects AI labs with domain experts to train their core AI models, has raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation, TechCrunch confirmed.
Felicis Ventures, which led the company’s previous $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation, is also leading this round. Existing investors Benchmark and General Catalyst and recent investor Robinhood Ventures also attended the event.
In September, TechCrunch reported that Mercor was in talks with investors to raise its Series C valuation to $10 billion, up from a goal of $8 billion a few months earlier. The company then informed potential investors that it already had many offers.
Mercor began as an AI-based recruiting platform, but quickly pivoted to providing firms with specialized subject material experts to train AI models – equivalent to scientists, doctors and lawyers – and charging an hourly finder fee and matching rate for their work.
The company also added more software infrastructure for reinforcement learning, a training method in which a model or agent’s decisions are verified or challenged, allowing it to incorporate feedback and improve over time. The company ultimately intends to build a recruitment market based on artificial intelligence.
Mercor’s fortune is reported to have risen after leading AI labs equivalent to OpenAI and Google DeepMind cut ties with data labeling startup Scale AI after Meta invested $14 billion in the data provider and hired its CEO.
The company has apparently told investors that it is on track to hit $500 million in ARR faster than Anysphere, the startup behind Cursor, which hit the milestone about a yr after launching its core product.
“Since we founded Mercor almost three years ago, artificial intelligence has advanced at an astonishing pace. But it still struggles with the subtleties that drive economically valuable work — balancing trade-offs, understanding intent, developing taste, and deciding what to do, not just what can be done,” the company wrote in a blog post emailed to TechCrunch.
The startup says it currently pays its contractors greater than $1.5 million a day. It employs over 30,000 experts who are paid an average of over $85 per hour.
Mercor said it’s going to focus on three areas: expanding its talent network, improving contractor-customer matching systems and building recent products to automate more processes.