Their meteoric rise with AI startup Mercor has not only minted overnight fortunes but also dethroned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg from a title he held for nearly two decades.
Two Indian-origin childhood friends, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha, alongside their co-founder Brendan Foody, have shattered records to become the world's youngest self-made billionaires at just 22 years old. Their meteoric rise with AI startup Mercor has not only minted overnight fortunes but also dethroned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg from a title he held for nearly two decades.
Who are Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha?
Hiremath and Midha, both American-born with deep roots in India, first bonded over late-night cram sessions for national debate tournaments at Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit high school in San Jose, California. Hiremath's parents hail from Karnataka, while Midha's emigrated from New Delhi, infusing their partnership with a shared cultural drive for excellence. The duo's paths converged again with Foody at Georgetown University, where their entrepreneurial sparks ignited. As Thiel Fellows—prestigious recipients of Peter Thiel's dropout grants—they ditched college to chase a bold vision in the heart of tech's innovation hub.
What began as a scrappy freelance marketplace has exploded into a cornerstone of the AI boom, propelling the trio to billionaire status faster than any before them. Their story is a testament to immigrant ambition, youthful audacity, and the insatiable hunger for AI talent in a world racing toward artificial general intelligence.
What does AI startup Mercor do?
At the core of this triumph is Mercor, a cutting-edge AI recruitment platform that's redefining how the world's top tech labs build their human firepower. Founded in 2023, Mercor specialises in 'human-in-the-loop' services, connecting a global network of over 30,000 vetted specialists, ranging from PhD researchers and lawyers to engineers and medical experts, with elite clients like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and six of the 'Magnificent Seven' tech giants (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla).
The company's secret sauce? An AI-driven matching system that lets candidates interview with virtual avatars, bypassing traditional hiring biases and accelerating placements based on precise skill alignment. Initially focused on linking software engineers in India with US freelance gigs, Mercor pivoted sharply to address the exploding demand for data labeling, scenario simulation, and ethical human oversight in AI model training, a niche exploding amid the generative AI frenzy. Run by a lean team of 30, with a median age of 22, Mercor operates like a startup on steroids: agile, global, and laser-focused on scaling AI's workforce backbone.
How did they become the youngest billionaires?
Mercor's ascent hit escape velocity with a blockbuster $350 million Series C funding round announced this week, catapulting its valuation to a jaw-dropping $10 billion. This latest infusion follows a $32 million Series A in September 2024 (valuing the firm at $250 million) and a $100 million Series B in February 2025 (hitting $2 billion). With each founder holding roughly 22 percent stakes, the deal instantly minted them billionaires, each with a net worth exceeding $2 billion.
The milestone doesn't just pad their bank accounts, it's a historic milestone. Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire at 23 in 2008, when Facebook's valuation soared to $15 billion, making him a paper billionaire worth over $1 billion. Now, 17 years later, Hiremath, Midha, and Foody have shaved a full year off that record, seizing the title as the planet's youngest self-made billionaires trio. They eclipse even recent contenders like Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, who hit billionaire status at 24.
