# Adarsh Hiremath

> Adarsh Hiremath is the Co-Founder and CTO of Mercor, the AI-powered talent marketplace connecting domain experts with AI labs for model training, evaluation, and data creation. At 22, he dropped out of Harvard, received a Thiel Fellowship, and co-built Mercor from a São Paulo hackathon idea into a $10 billion company generating over $500 million in annual revenue - making him one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires alongside co-founders Brendan Foody and Surya Midha.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CTO at Mercor
- **Organizations:** Mercor, Harvard University (former), Bellarmine College Preparatory, Thiel Foundation
- **Nationality:** American (Indian-origin)
- **Education:** High School Diploma, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Computer Science (B.S./M.S. concurrent — dropped out sophomore year), Harvard University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Mercor, reaching $10B valuation in under 3 years, Named one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires at age 22, surpassing Zuckerberg's prior record of 23, Led Mercor to $500M+ ARR and profitability with zero enterprise churn

## Career timeline

- **2017-2021** — Competed on Bellarmine College Preparatory's nationally ranked speech and debate team; co-led team to winning all three major national policy debate tournaments in the same year
- **2021** — Enrolled at Harvard University in concurrent B.S./M.S. Computer Science program
- **2021-2022** — Research Assistant at Harvard in Computer Vision/ML; ML Research at IBM; Associate at Harvard College Consulting Group; Software Developer at Stanford University
- **Early 2023** — Attended hackathon in São Paulo with Brendan Foody and Surya Midha; conceived Mercor's founding model
- **2023** — Dropped out of Harvard sophomore year to co-found Mercor; within nine months the company hit $1M revenue run rate
- **2024** — Received Thiel Fellowship ($100,000 grant); Mercor named to Forbes 30 Under 30
- **March 2025** — Mercor raises Series B at $2B valuation led by Felicis Ventures
- **May 2025** — Mercor hires Sundeep Jain (former Uber CPO) as first president
- **October 2025** — Mercor raises $350M Series C at $10B valuation; Adarsh and co-founders named world's youngest self-made billionaires
- **October 2025** — Bloomberg lists Mercor among '24 AI Startups to Watch in 2026'
- **January 2026** — Mercor releases APEX-Agents AI benchmarking report

## Achievements

- Co-founded Mercor, reaching $10B valuation in under 3 years
- Named one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires at age 22, surpassing Zuckerberg's prior record of 23
- Led Mercor to $500M+ ARR and profitability with zero enterprise churn
- Received Thiel Fellowship from the Thiel Foundation
- Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 list for AI
- Scaled Mercor to 30,000+ contractor network across doctors, lawyers, engineers, and scientists
- Co-captain of national champion debate team at Bellarmine College Preparatory
- Built APEX (AI Productivity Index) benchmarking AI models on 200 real-world professional tasks
- Secured $350M Series C led by Felicis Ventures, with Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood Ventures

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Mercor releases APEX-Agents AI benchmarking report evaluating agent-based AI systems
- **2025-10** — Mercor raises $350M Series C at $10B valuation; Adarsh named one of world's youngest self-made billionaires
- **2025-10** — Bloomberg lists Mercor among '24 AI Startups to Watch in 2026'
- **2025-05** — Mercor hires Sundeep Jain, former Uber CPO, as company's first president

## Links

- Website: https://mercor.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adarsh-h-623941204/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/adarsh_exe

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/adarsh-a
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-27