Meet the 22-Year-Old Billionaires Behind a $10B AI Empire

Meet the 22-Year-Old Billionaires Behind a $10B AI Empire

There's a new wave rising in the world of tech, and it's not being led by grey-haired executives or by Silicon Valley veterans-it was started by three 22-year-old founders who believed talent shouldn't be limited by geography, résumé, or privilege.

Meet Adarsh Hiremath, Surya Midha, and Brendan Foody-the brains behind Mercor, the AI-powered talent platform now valued at $10 billion and making them the youngest self-made billionaires in the world, even younger than Mark Zuckerberg when he hit the mark.

But their story is not about luck. It's about seeing the future before anyone else did.

It involves:

• The Idea That Started It All

• It began with one simple observation:

• The best talent in the world is not sitting in San Francisco it's everywhere.

Developers in places like Nigeria, India, Philippines, Brazil, Vietnam-no matter how talented they were-were locked out of the global tech economy because of:

• Lack of visibility

• Lack of networking opportunities

• And outdated hiring systems

• Adarsh, Surya, and Brendan saw the gap.

• And they built Mercor to solve it.

What is Mercor?

Mercor is a worldwide AI-enabled hiring platform that:

Evaluates candidate skills using automated tests

Matches companies with talent worldwide.

Helps startups hire efficiently without recruiters

Allows candidates to prove skill instead of credentials

In simple words:

If LinkedIn is your résumé. Mercor is your actual ability.

It achieves this by using AI in code grading, task performance analysis, and recommending the right candidate in minutes, tasks that hitherto took companies weeks.

The timing was just right:

Companies struggled to hire AI engineers fast enough while the world was racing into AI.

Mercor became the bridge.

A Shopper's Journey by John Deighton In a double-blind experiment, 88 cellphone users were given one of four different kinds of music to listen to while they shopped online.

Dropping Out to Bet Everything

At age 20, most students are memorizing textbooks.

But Adarsh (Harvard), Surya (Georgetown), and Brendan (ditto Georgetown), did something unthinkable:

They dropped out and went all-in on Mercor.

Friends, family, professors most people thought they were risking everything.

And they were.

But they trusted one thing:

Skill is the new currency. Opportunity should be borderless.

The Breakthrough Moment

Their early users were not giant corporations they were:

• Teen coders from India

• ML engineers from Africa

Self-taught programmers from Latin America

People who never got a chance before.

But when the Silicon Valley startups started to hire talent through Mercor and see real results faster + cheaper + better, the platform exploded.

Soon:

• Top VCs came knocking

• AI labs started integrating Mercor's pipeline.

• Even Fortune 500 companies began using the platform.

• And then came the big valuation jump, with Mercor hitting 10 billion dollars.

The founders? They are self-made billionaires at age 22.

Why Their Success Matters

This isn't a story about money.

It's about a shift.

For decades, power in tech belonged to:

Elite universities

Silicon Valley networks

Traditional hiring pipelines

But now?

A 19-year-old with a laptop from Bangalore can compete with a graduate from Stanford.

A 17-year-old Kenyan can get hired by a US-based startup.

The next AI breakthrough could be built by a developer from Indonesia.

Because Mercor made the world fairer.

From India to the World

One of the most inspiring parts of this story is Adarsh Hiremath's background.

He grew up in India before moving to the US and understood firsthand the frustration that comes from being talented and unseen.

He knew how many brilliant minds never get a seat at the table.

So instead of fighting for a seat He built an entirely new table.

And brought millions along with him.

The Future They Are Building

Mercor is not stopping at hiring.

They are now working on:

• AI-native workplaces

• Autonomous project teams

• Decentralized labor systems

Imagine this future:

• A startup wants to build an app.

• Instead of hiring a team one by one

They use Mercor → AI builds a team → developers all over the world collaborate in real-time → product launches in 10 days.

This is not science fiction; it is the direction Mercor is already moving toward.

So what can we learn from their journey?

1. Age doesn’t define impact; ideas do.

2. Dropping out isn't failure, if you're building something real.

3. Talent is everywhere opportunities aren't.

4. The future belongs to the ones who create systems, not follow them.

You don't have to be born into a rich family.

You don't need to have any connections.

You don’t need permission.

You need:

1. Curiosity

2. Courage

3. Execution

"Just like they had."

The New Era Has Begun Adarsh. Surya. Brendan. Three friends. No rich family. No corporate background. Just believe in an idea and guts to build it. Today, they're rewriting how the world hires. Tomorrow, they could change the way the world works. Because the future of opportunity is borderless. And they opened the gate.