Mercor Doubles to $20 Billion Valuation in $750M Series D

Mercor has raised $750 million in a Series D round that values the AI training startup at $20 billion, the company said on Tuesday. Benchmark, Felicis, Fundomo, Nvidia and funds managed by affiliates of Apollo were among the participants in the deal.

The new valuation roughly doubles the approximately $10 billion figure Mercor reached in October last year, when it raised $350 million. Jack Dorsey and venture capitalist Peter Thiel count among its earlier backers.

What does Mercor actually do?

The San Francisco-based company started as an AI-powered hiring platform. It has since changed its product. Mercor now connects technology companies with subject-matter experts whose knowledge trains, tests and improves AI models and agents.

Think of it as a supply chain for human expertise. A company building an AI agent needs people who know the work the agent is supposed to do. Those experts show the model what correct output looks like. Mercor sits in the middle and sells that connection.

The company said the new capital will go toward training and testing AI agents on professional tasks. That marks a shift from generic model training toward evaluating agents as they take on whole jobs.

Co-CEO Brendan Foody laid out the thesis behind the raise. He said every job in the economy will require its own AI agents, and every company will need a way to train and evaluate those agents on its own work.

That claim explains the scale of the round. If agents multiply by job type and by company, the market for training and evaluation services grows with them. Mercor is positioning itself as the testing layer for that expansion.

How fast has the valuation moved?

The numbers show steep acceleration:

• October 2025: Mercor raised $350 million at a valuation of roughly $10 billion.
• Tuesday's announcement: $750 million in Series D funding at a $20 billion valuation.

The valuation doubled in under a year. The round size more than doubled over the same period. Benchmark, Felicis, Fundomo, Nvidia and Apollo-affiliated funds joined a cap table that already included Jack Dorsey and Peter Thiel.

Nvidia's participation carries weight beyond money. The chipmaker backs companies that buy its hardware and fill gaps in the AI development stack. A marketplace for expert labor that trains and tests agents fits that pattern.

What does the deal say about AI funding?

The Mercor round reflects strong investor appetite for AI. That appetite has driven a sharp rise in private funding this year and produced a growing group of heavily capitalised startups with multibillion-dollar valuations.

According to Crunchbase, AI-driven startups raised $102 billion in the third quarter of 2026. That figure accounted for 64% of global venture capital in the quarter.

One comparison shows the concentration. AI companies took roughly two of every three venture dollars deployed worldwide, leaving all other sectors to compete for the remainder. Rounds like Mercor's push that share upward.

What happens next?

The company plans to spend the $750 million on training and testing AI agents on professional tasks. Foody's framing suggests the bet extends beyond current models: if every job needs its own agents, Mercor's addressable market tracks the entire labor economy rather than any single software category.

The test will be execution. A $20 billion valuation implies investors expect revenue to grow into the number, and rivals in the expert-data and AI-evaluation space face the same tailwind. With $102 billion flowing into AI startups in a single quarter, Mercor will not lack competition for experts or customers.