- By Shivangi Sharma
- Sun, 02 Nov 2025 02:13 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
In a milestone moment for the global tech industry, three 22-year-old founders of AI recruiting startup Mercor have become officially the world's youngest self-made billionaires, outpacing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who made the Forbes Billionaires List for the first time at age 23 in 2008. It has managed to raise USD 350 million in new funding, with Forbes saying it is now valued at USD 10 billion.
The new round of investment has catapulted its co-founders, CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and board chairman Surya Midha, all into billionaire territory, making headlines throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.
Indian-Origin Duo Leads Silicon Valley Success
Two of the three co-founders, Surya Midha and Adarsh Hiremath, are Indian Americans. The two met for the first time at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, an all-boys school. They were both members of the school's highly competitive debate team. In a history-making feat, the two became the first ever to win all three national policy debate tournaments in one year.
On his personal website, Midha reveals he is a second-generation immigrant, “My parents immigrated to the US from New Delhi, India. I was born in Mountain View and raised in San Jose,” he stated.
Hiremath also attended Bellarmine before enrolling at Harvard University to study computer science. After two years, he dropped out to focus on Mercor full-time, following in the footsteps of other young college-exit founders like Zuckerberg.
Investors believe that hiring automation represents one of the next trillion-dollar opportunities in enterprise AI, explaining the staggering valuation.
A New Generation Of Tech Billionaires
Mercor’s founders now join an exclusive club of young, ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs:
Earlier this year, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan (27) reached billionaire status after a USD 2 billion investment tied to the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company. Before that, Alexandr Wang (28) of Scale AI held the youngest self-made billionaire title. His co-founder Lucy Guo (30) recently became the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire, surpassing Taylor Swift.