Record Shattered: Who Are the World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires?
The tech world is buzzing with the news: a trio of 22-year-old founders have officially become the new World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires. This incredible feat was achieved thanks to a massive funding round for their AI recruiting startup, Mercor. The three co-founders—CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and board chairman Surya Midha—each now hold an estimated 22% stake in the company, catapulting their personal fortunes into the ten-figure club. Remarkably, they have beaten the record set decades ago by Mark Zuckerberg, who debuted as a billionaire at age 23. This milestone confirms that the AI revolution is creating unprecedented wealth at lightning speed.
The $10 Billion Startup That Minted the World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires
Mercor, a recruiting startup based in San Francisco, has rapidly carved out a vital role in the AI landscape. Their core business is helping Silicon Valley’s largest AI labs secure the expert contractors—such as Ph.Ds and lawyers—needed to train their sophisticated models, a process known as data labeling. Earlier this week, the company announced a stunning $350 million funding round, which valued Mercor at a staggering $10 billion. This infusion of cash not only fuels Mercor’s expansion but instantly transformed its three young leaders into the newest and most prominent billionaires of the current tech boom.
From Debate Club to $10 Billion: The Founders’ Unique Journey
The story of the new World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires began in high school, where the trio were friends and competed together on their Bay Area debate team. Their shared ambition led them to a bold, unconventional path: dropping out of college as recipients of the Thiel Fellowship, a program that grants $100,000 to young people who forego traditional university education to start a company. “It feels very surreal,” Foody told Forbes following the news. Hiremath, who spent two years at Harvard before accepting the fellowship, echoed the sentiment: “If I weren’t working on Mercor, I would have just graduated college a couple months ago. My life did such a 180.”
The AI Gold Rush: Why These World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires Rose So Fast
Mercor’s explosive growth from an initial focus on matching engineers with freelance coding jobs to becoming a key provider of specialized data labeling is a textbook example of finding the right market fit in the AI era. Their trajectory was accelerated by a major upheaval in the data labeling sector: when competitor Scale AI was partially acquired by Meta, many major frontier labs turned to Mercor as an independent alternative. This perfect storm of market opportunity, a lean operating team, and rapid execution helped them achieve a $500 million annualized revenue run rate in a matter of months, solidifying their status as the World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires.
A New Era of Competition and Controversy for the World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires
The intense competition driving the AI market has not been without its drama. Mercor’s rise placed it in direct rivalry with industry giants, leading to a lawsuit filed by Scale AI alleging the startup stole trade secrets. While the founders remain focused on the business—Foody noted they don’t “spend a lot of time thinking about” the complaint—the legal battle highlights the high-stakes environment in which they operate. Regardless, the 22-year-olds have firmly supplanted the previous title holders, including 27-year-old Shayne Coplan of Polymarket and 28-year-old Alexandr Wang of Scale AI, marking a significant generational shift in the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.
The Price of Success: Life After Becoming the World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires
Despite their extraordinary wealth, the three founders maintain that their lives haven’t drastically changed, primarily because their singular focus remains on the business. They are still putting in punishing hours, reflecting the intense demands of scaling a $10 billion company. As Foody remarked, “I leave the office around like 10:30 [p.m.], on an average day, six days a week. And so there’s not a whole lot of time outside of that to be distracted by things outside of the business.” Their relentless work ethic—inherited from parents who were also software engineers in the Bay Area—proves that even for the World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires, the journey to the top is paved with grit and sacrifice.
Credit: Forbes.com
