How AI labs use Mercor to get the data companies won’t share

As an alternative of signing costly contracts with corporations for his or her information, AI labs as of late try a brand new tack: tapping former senior staff from these corporations for his or her trade data, Mercor CEO Brendan Foody mentioned at Trendster Disrupt 2025 on Tuesday.

Talking on a panel onstage, Foody forged Mercor’s market as one of many essential channels connecting the previous staff of funding banks, consulting homes, and regulation corporations with AI labs that want to automate these industries. A few of Mercor’s prospects embrace OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.

“There’s an argument that Goldman Sachs doesn’t love the thought of getting fashions which might be in a position to automate their worth chain,” mentioned Foody, utilizing the Wall Avenue large for instance. “It undoubtedly shifts the aggressive dynamics, and that’s a part of the rationale that the labs want us. Their prospects don’t need to give them information to automate massive parts of their worth chains, so they should rent contractors who beforehand labored at these corporations, perceive these workflows, and are prepared to coach fashions to automate them.”

Foody, the 22-year-old co-founder of Mercor, says his startup pays trade specialists as much as $200 an hour to fill out varieties and write experiences for AI coaching. The corporate now has tens of hundreds of contractors and says it doles out greater than $1.5 million to them day-after-day. Nonetheless, Foody says the startup stays worthwhile as a result of AI labs are prepared to pay much more for that beneficial information.

In slightly below three years since its inception, Mercor has elevated its annualized recurring income to roughly $500 million, and lately raised funding at a $10 billion valuation.

Incumbents throughout the economic system have good purpose to be immune to Mercor’s rise, as their trade’s data could also be slipping out the again door by way of former staff on the startup’s market, which might in the end be used to automate their work. Foody acknowledged he could also be exposing an inefficiency available in the market however mentioned he wouldn’t name it a “loophole.”

In truth, Foody says some corporations are already embracing this “new future of labor.” He entertained the concept Mercor’s market might create a brand new sort of gig economic system, very like Uber did greater than a decade in the past. (Earlier this yr, Uber’s former chief product officer, Sundeep Jain, joined Mercor as president.)

“There are corporations which might be embracing it and understand that the world goes to alter in a short time,” mentioned Foody. “There’s undoubtedly one other class of corporations which might be fearful, and fear about being dis-intermediated, and having their prospects go on to the AI labs or utility layer platforms. My hunch is that the previous class goes to develop into on the best aspect of historical past.”

Whereas Mercor tries to extract data from varied industries, Foody mentioned his startup tries to stop contractors from committing company espionage — the unlawful act of stealing proprietary info, commerce secrets and techniques, or mental property from one enterprise and promoting it to a different.

However that’s simpler mentioned than completed. Most of Mercor’s workforce are former staff of regulation corporations, funding banks, and different industries which might be very secretive about their information. Foody mentioned a few of Mercor’s contractors nonetheless work at their day jobs and simply submit information on the aspect, and he claimed that contractors are instructed to not add paperwork from their former office. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that it’s potential “there are issues that occur” given the dimensions of his startup.

Foody argues that the data in an worker’s head belongs to the worker, and never their firm — a extra beneficiant view than many enterprises would take. Plus, in a few of Mercor’s job postings, the startup walks the road between requesting an worker’s data and their firm’s information.

For instance, Mercor is at present in search of the CTO or co-founder of a startup who “can authorize entry to a considerable, manufacturing codebase” for AI evaluations, or probably AI mannequin coaching. In an electronic mail, Mercor advised Trendster that just a few startup CTOs have taken them up on this provide however declined to reveal particulars of their contracts.

Mercor was one of many first information startups to recruit extremely expert data employees within the U.S. and pay them massive sums to coach AI fashions. Early within the AI growth, information distributors like Scale AI employed contractors in third-world international locations to do pretty easy labeling jobs. Now, most of Mercor’s rivals — together with Surge and Scale AI — have caught on that AI labs want specialists to enhance their AI fashions. Many information distributors have additionally began coaching “environments” to enhance AI brokers’ means to finish real-world duties.

Mercor has clearly benefited from Scale AI’s misfortunes: Many AI labs stopped working with Scale AI after Meta made a big funding within the startup and employed its CEO. Within the final yr, Mercor has quintupled its worth, nevertheless it nonetheless stays smaller than Surge and Scale AI, that are each valued at upward of $20 billion.

At this time, most of Mercor’s income comes from just some AI labs, however Foody says the startup plans to associate with different industries sooner or later. He believes corporations in regulation, finance, and drugs will need assist leveraging their information to coach AI brokers — one thing Mercor makes a speciality of.

“Over time, ChatGPT will likely be higher than the very best consulting agency, higher than the very best funding financial institution, and higher than the very best regulation agency,” mentioned Foody. “That’s going to remodel the economic system radically, which will likely be a broadly optimistic power that helps to create abundance for everybody.”