Indian origin duo tops global billionaire list at 22
Mercor AI founders Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha hit $2B net worth each after $350M funding round.
Newsroom, November 03, 2025: Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha, 22-year-old Indian-Americans, have surged into the world's youngest self-made billionaires alongside co-founder Brendan Foody, thanks to their San Francisco-based AI startup Mercor, which is now valued at $10 billion following a $350 million Series C round.
The trio, who dropped out of top universities via Thiel Fellowships, launched Mercor in early 2023 to link Indian coders to U.S. firms but quickly shifted to AI data labelling, amassing $500 million in annual revenue by mid-2024 through clients like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.
Hiremath (from Karnataka roots) serves as CTO, Midha (New Delhi heritage) as board chair, and Foody as CEO, managing a 30-person team averaging 22 years old. The startup's "human-in-the-loop" approach for AI training has fueled its rise, eclipsing Mark Zuckerberg's age-23 milestone and drawing praise as Silicon Valley's quickest grower.
