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Mercor raises $750M at a $20B valuation to sell AI evals beyond the labs
Mercor, which pays a network of more than five million experts to train and test AI models, has raised a US$750 million Series D at a US$20 billion valuation. The money is aimed at taking its evaluation and post-training work from frontier labs to every kind of company.
Mercor has raised a US$750 million Series D at a US$20 billion valuation[1]. Investors include 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, and the round included an employee tender[1]. Mercor did not say how much of the total went to the tender[4].
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From labs to everyone
Mercor began as an AI hiring platform and now runs a network of more than five million experts who are paid to train and evaluate AI models on real professional work[2]. Its main buyers so far have been frontier AI labs[4]. The new money is meant to sell the same service to companies in any industry, giving them a way to measure how reliably AI agents complete tasks and at what cost[2].
"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," co-founder Brendan Foody said[3].
The funding goes into research and infrastructure for evals and post-training, including realistic environments where agents can learn complex professional workflows[1].
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Why it matters
As agents move into real business work, the bottleneck shifts from raw model capability to proof that an agent does a specific job well. Mercor is betting that companies will pay for expert-graded evals of their own workflows, the same way frontier labs already do.
Sources
Sources for this story.
- Organizing human intelligence for the entire economy (Mercor)mercor.com
- Mercor Raises $750 Million Series D at $20 Billion Valuation (Business Wire)businesswire.com
- AI training startup Mercor valued at $20 billion in latest funding round (Reuters via Investing.com)investing.com
- Mercor raises $750m at a $20bn valuation to train AI on every job (The Next Web)thenextweb.com
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
01How much did Mercor raise?
US$750 million in a Series D that values the company at US$20 billion. The round included an employee tender offer.
02Who invested?
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.
03What does Mercor do?
It started as an AI hiring platform and now runs a network of more than five million experts who are paid to train and evaluate AI models using their professional knowledge.
04What will the money fund?
Research and infrastructure for evaluations and post-training, including realistic environments where AI agents can learn complex professional workflows, with a push to sell to enterprises rather than only frontier labs.
05How does this compare with its last round?
Mercor was valued at about US$10 billion when it raised US$350 million in October 2025, so the valuation has roughly doubled in a year.
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