Mercor Raises $750 Million at a $20 Billion Valuation
The AI training startup says its Series D, which includes an employee tender, will fund evaluation and post-training work for enterprises beyond frontier labs.
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Mercor said Tuesday it raised a $750 million Series D that values the company at $20 billion. Mercor said the round "included an employee tender along with participation from numerous investors," among them Benchmark, Felicis, General Catalyst, Nvidia, Salesforce, Zoom and others. It did not name a lead investor.
The valuation is double the roughly $10 billion Mercor was valued at after a $350 million Series C in October 2025, as TechCrunch and CNA reported. Mercor says the new money will expand its evaluation and post-training work to enterprises, not only frontier AI labs.
At a glance
| Item | Detail | Source/status |
|---|---|---|
| Round size and valuation | $750 million Series D at $20 billion | Mercor announcement (fully read) |
| Employee tender | Included in the round; its share of the $750 million not disclosed | Mercor; TNW |
| Lead investor this round | None named | Mercor; no source read names one |
| Prior round | $350 million Series C at about $10 billion in October 2025, led by Felicis | TechCrunch (fully read); CNA |
| Expert network | More than five million experts paid to train frontier models | Mercor |
| Use of funds | Infrastructure and research for evals and post-training; more environments for agents | Mercor |
| Offices | New York and London opened this year, in addition to San Francisco | Mercor |
Who is in the round
Mercor listed Benchmark, Felicis, Fundomo, funds managed by affiliates of Apollo, G Squared, General Catalyst, Glade Brook Capital, Nvidia, Salesforce, Sapphire Ventures, StepStone Group, XTX Ventures and Zoom among the participants. The company did not name a lead investor for the Series D.
TechCrunch reported that Felicis led the October 2025 Series C, in which Benchmark, General Catalyst and Robinhood Ventures also participated, and that the round valued Mercor at $10 billion. CNA put that earlier valuation at about $10 billion, and TNW described the new valuation as double it.
Mercor said the round included an employee tender. TNW reported that Mercor did not say how much of the $750 million went to the tender, so the figure should not be read as entirely new primary capital.
From frontier labs to the Fortune 500
CNA says Mercor began as an AI-powered hiring platform and now connects technology companies with subject-matter experts whose knowledge is used to train, test and improve AI models and agents. Mercor says more than five million experts in its network are paid to train frontier models.
Mercor says it spent the last two years building infrastructure to train and evaluate frontier models on real-world work with human intelligence, and is "now bringing those same capabilities to enterprises across the economy" to evaluate what agents can do, what they cost and how to improve their performance. It says those capabilities "are now being adopted by big tech, developers of open models, application layer companies, and the Fortune 500."
Mercor says the funding "accelerates our investment in the infrastructure and research for evals and post-training and in building more environments where agents can learn complex workflows." The company says it builds custom evals from companies' actual workflows and describes enterprise post-training "starting from a capable open model." Mercor said it acquired Deeptune earlier this year; that team spent two years recreating hundreds of enterprise applications where AI agents can practice professional workflows. It also opened New York and London offices this year.
Brendan Foody, a co-founder whose byline on Mercor's post reads "Co-founder / CEO" and whom TNW and CNA call co-CEO, said, as quoted by TNW and CNA: "Every job in the economy will need its own AI agents, and every company will need a way to train and evaluate them on its own work." Adarsh Hiremath, the other co-founder and co-CEO according to TNW, told that outlet: "A model can score well on a public benchmark and still fail on the systems, policies, and edge cases that define how a specific business runs."
Foody also wrote that Mercor already spends "3x as much on inference as on employee salaries" and argued that the trend could mean "double-digit GDP growth over the next five years." That is his speculation, not a verified outcome.
What Mercor did not disclose
Mercor did not disclose the size of the employee tender, the split between new and secondary money, or a lead investor, and none of the sources read gives revenue figures. TNW reported that an April breach led Meta to freeze AI data work with Mercor; Mercor's post does not mention it.
What to watch
Whether Mercor discloses the tender amount or a primary-versus-secondary split, and how it describes enterprise adoption of its evals and post-training work.
How we reported this
DailyMech read Mercor's announcement post in full, TNW's and CNA's reports, and TechCrunch's October 2025 story on the prior round. The Business Wire press release did not load and was not used. DailyMech contacted no one.
Published and fact-checked November 10, 2026.
Sources
- Organizing human intelligence for the entire economy | Mercor Series D, Brendan Foody (byline Co-founder / CEO), Mercor blog, November 10, 2026, https://www.mercor.com/blog/series-d/ (fully read)
- Mercor raises $750m at a $20bn valuation to train AI on every job, The Next Web, November 10, 2026, https://thenextweb.com/news/mercor-750m-series-d-20bn-valuation (fully read)
- AI training startup Mercor valued at $20 billion in latest funding round, CNA, November 10, 2026, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/ai-training-startup-mercor-valued-20-billion-in-latest-funding-round-6540151 (fully read)
- Mercor quintuples valuation to $10B with $350M Series C, Ram Iyer, TechCrunch, October 27, 2025, https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/27/mercor-quintuples-valuation-to-10b-with-350m-series-c/ (fully read)
- Business Wire, "Mercor Raises $750 Million Series D at $20 Billion Valuation to Help Enterprises Own Their Intelligence," https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261110410031/en/Mercor-Raises-%24750-Million-Series-D-at-%2420-Billion-Valuation-to-Help-Enterprises-Own-Their-Intelligence — not read (fetch timed out twice); not used
DailyMech used AI tools to help research and draft this article; it was fact-checked by our editors.