Startup profile · funding coverage
Mercor funding, valuation and investors
AI expert-talent and model-evaluation platform; its last company-announced priced round was a $350M Series C at $10B in October 2025, with a higher 2026 valuation reported but not company-confirmed.
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Funding, valuation & investors
Answer-first snapshotLatest funding
Series C
$350M · October 27, 2025
Latest known valuation
$10B (company-announced)
Series C · October 27, 2025
Total disclosed equity funding
$480M
Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.
Current status
private
growth · San Francisco, California, United States
Investors in latest funding
Lead: Felicis
Other: Benchmark , General Catalyst , Robinhood Ventures
Overview
Founded in 2023, Mercor operates a marketplace and workflow platform matching domain experts with AI research laboratories and enterprise customers. Medical, legal, finance and engineering specialists help train, evaluate and improve AI models. On October 27, 2025, Mercor confirmed a $350M Series C led by Felicis at a $10B valuation. The company's earlier $100M Series B, led by Felicis in February 2025, was valued at $2B.
July–August 2026 reports described new financing discussions at roughly $20B, including potential Nvidia participation; Mercor had not independently confirmed those terms as a completed round in the primary releases reviewed on October 29, 2026. Its CEO's reported $2B annualized gross revenue run rate is not net revenue after expert payouts.
Why Mercor is interesting
Mercor supplies expert human judgment used to train and evaluate frontier AI systems, making it a high-growth but customer-concentrated infrastructure business. Its 2025 $10B company-announced mark must be distinguished from reported 2026 talks around $20B; the size and close of any later priced round are not confirmed by its own announcements.
Product & use cases
Mercor recruits, vets and coordinates specialized human experts whose knowledge becomes high-quality training and evaluation data for advanced AI models. Its APEX benchmarking work measures models on professional tasks; the commercial model includes labor-intensive operations as well as software.
- Specialized evaluation and reinforcement-learning feedback for frontier AI models
- Hiring subject-matter experts in medicine, law, finance and engineering for AI development
- Benchmarking AI on complex professional work and supporting enterprise agent workflows
Key facts
- Oct 27, 2025: $350M Series C led by Felicis at $10B company-announced valuation.
- Feb 20, 2025: $100M Series B led by Felicis at a reported $2B valuation.
- Jul–Aug 2026: reports described potential $20B financing, not a company-confirmed close; exclude from completed-round totals.
- Alumni Ventures lists Mercor in its official AV 2026 APEX 100 portfolio.
Funding history (newest first)
Series C
2025-10-27 $350M Valuation: $10B (company-announced)- Felicis (lead)
- Benchmark (participant)
- General Catalyst (participant)
- Robinhood Ventures (participant)
Source: Read source · mercor.com
Series B
2025-02-20 $100M Valuation: $2B (reported)- Felicis (lead)
- General Catalyst (participant)
- DST Global Partners (participant)
- Benchmark (participant)
- Menlo Ventures (participant)
Source: Read source · mercor.com
Series A
2024-09 $30M (reported) Valuation: $250M (reported by Dealroom)- Benchmark (lead)
- General Catalyst (participant)
Source: Read source · app.dealroom.co
Investors in our directory
Funds linked from Mercor's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.
Competitive landscape
Edge: Potentially defensible access to a specialist expert network and repeat AI-lab relationships, counterbalanced by customer concentration, competition for high-quality experts and high pass-through contractor costs.
Two ratios matter: gross billings versus net revenue after paying experts, and concentration across a small group of frontier-model customers. A $20B proposed financing valuation should not be presented as a completed Series D without dated primary evidence. Inferences about durable profitability from annualized gross sales are inappropriate.
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Scale AI direct
Large provider of AI training and evaluation data; business mix and labor model differ.
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Turing direct
Expert-talent and AI training services competing for major laboratory budgets.
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Surge AI direct
Human evaluation and reinforcement-learning datasets for AI model teams.
Industries
Market / IPO context
Editorial / static context — not a live quote.
FAQs about Mercor
Practical answers founders, operators, and investors typically search for.
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Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.