Mercor Raises $750 Million Series D at a $20 Billion Valuation
We raised our $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation from @benchmark, @generalcatalyst, @nvidia, @salesforce, and @zoom. @mercor scaled from $1M to $3B in run-rate revenue in 27 months, the fastest in history to $3B. For 2 years, we've organized human intelligence to build evals and training data for every frontier lab. The labs are the leading indicator for AI startups, then the Fortune 500. Our growth has accelerated over the past 6 months as enterprises start evaluating and training their own models. For many, owning their intelligence is existential.
Context
A $20 billion valuation for a company that builds evals and training data would make Mercor one of the most richly priced private firms in the AI stack.
Brendan Foody, Mercor's CEO, posted that the company raised a $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation, naming Benchmark, General Catalyst, Nvidia, Salesforce, and Zoom among the backers. He said Mercor scaled from $1 million to $3 billion in run rate revenue in 27 months. Mercor also published a company blog post on the round.
Deep dive
Brendan Foody posted that Mercor raised a $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, Nvidia, Salesforce, and Zoom. He wrote that Mercor scaled from $1 million to $3 billion in run rate revenue in 27 months, which he called the fastest in history to $3 billion. He said that for two years the company has organized human intelligence to build evals and training data for every frontier lab, that labs are the leading indicator for AI startups and then the Fortune 500, and that growth has accelerated over the past 6 months as enterprises start evaluating and training their own models.
Mercor's company blog, also published today and signed by Foody as co founder and CEO, confirms the $750 million Series D and the $20 billion valuation. The blog says the round included an employee tender and lists a wider set of participants than the post: 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. Foody wrote that Mercor has a network of more than five million experts paid to train frontier models, that the company acquired Deeptune earlier this year, and that the new funding will go into infrastructure and research for evals and post training.
The $3 billion run rate figure comes from Foody's post and was not broken out in the blog post reviewed for this scan. The blog also did not say how much of the $750 million went to the employee tender versus new capital for the company.
What to expect next
Watch for whether Mercor names more enterprise customers, and for any later disclosure of how much of the round was an employee tender. The $3 billion run rate claim will be tested if the company shares a fuller breakdown or if customers confirm large eval and training contracts. The next useful signal is whether the Fortune 500 work Foody described starts to show up in named deals, not only in lab business.