Artificial intelligence service startup Mercor recently announced a large-scale financing round, raising a total of $350 million. According to its blog post, this round was led again by Felicis, which had previously led its $100 million Series B funding, with Benchmark, General Catalyst, and new investor Robinhood Ventures also participating.

Mercor was founded by three "Thiel Fellows," and its core business has successfully shifted from initial recruitment decision support to "recruiting high-skilled professionals to provide training support for artificial intelligence models."

Capturing the Market Gap Left by Scale AI's Exit

The recent financing and accelerated business direction of Mercor are attributed to a major industry change that occurred in June. At that time, Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion. Adash Hiremas, co-founder of Mercor, told Forbes: "It is rare in the startup industry for your biggest competitor to be 'eliminated' overnight."

According to reports, after Meta invested in Scale AI, concerns about its neutrality arose, leading several major artificial intelligence laboratories, including Google and OpenAI, to terminate their collaborations with Scale AI. Mercor seized this key opportunity, shifting its focus to data annotation and AI training support, quickly filling the market gap.

Accelerating Talent Network Development and Service Upgrades

Mercor revealed in its blog that it currently manages over 30,000 contract workers, with daily payroll exceeding $1.5 million. These employees help AI agents achieve more human-like thinking patterns by "sharing knowledge, experience, and contextual information that cannot be captured by code alone."

This new funding will focus on three core areas: expanding the company's talent network, upgrading the matching system for "experts and training opportunities," and improving the speed of service delivery.

Intensifying Competitive Landscape

The competition Mercor faces in data annotation and AI training is becoming increasingly fierce. Among its competitors, Surge AI is reportedly planning a new funding round with a target valuation of up to $1 billion; Turing AI had a valuation of $2.2 billion in March; and Invisible Technologies raised $100 million in a new funding round in September, surpassing a $2 billion valuation. With this large-scale financing, Mercor will strongly participate in the "race for unicorn status" centered around AI training talent and data.