Three US friends become world’s youngest billionaires with AI recruitment startup

Three friends from the United States have become the world’s youngest billionaires after founding Mercor, an artificial intelligence–based recruitment startup.

According to Forbes, which published its ranking of the world’s wealthiest people under the age of 40, the entrepreneurs are Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody, and Surya Midha. Each of them is 22 years old.

The trio became friends while still in school, remained in close contact after graduation, and in 2023 jointly launched Mercor, a startup that uses AI technologies to streamline personnel recruitment.

In October, private investors valued the company at $2.2 billion. As a result, the three entrepreneurs surpassed the record set by Mark Zuckerberg, who became the world’s youngest billionaire in 2007 at the age of 23.

According to the founders, the AI-based recruitment model is designed to reduce subjective bias in evaluating job candidates. While traditional interviews depend heavily on human factors, the startup aims to provide a more thorough and objective assessment of professional skills, the developers say.

Founded by the trio in 2023, Mercor helps Silicon Valley’s biggest AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta to train their models by recruiting experts and PhDs to evaluate and fine-tune data. Forbes estimates each cofounder has an approximate 22% stake in the company.

By Khagan Isayev