How Three 22-Year-Olds Built a $10 B AI Hiring Empire and Became Youngest AI Billionaires

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Top 3 Things in Today’s Latestly AI Edition

1. Mercor’s 22-year-old founders build a $10B AI hiring empire, redefining how companies recruit talent.

2. Global AI funding surges: Reflection AI raises $2B, Crusoe expands sustainable data centers, and Oura hits $900M.

3. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral headline this week’s unicorn power shifts: here’s who’s rising fastest.

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AI Story - Eugenia Kuyda: From Replika to Wabi

When three high-school teammates from the Bay Area: Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath (CTO) and Surya Midha (COO) dropped out of college in 2023, they weren’t chasing a social-media moment. They were architecting what would become one of the fastest-growing AI hiring marketplaces in tech.

From their dorm-room hustle pairing freelance engineers with early-stage startups, they evolved into a platform where their AI system conducts 20-minute virtual interviews and matches candidates to rolesclaiming to outperform traditional recruiters. 

What’s Mercor Doing?

• AI-Driven Matching: Candidates upload resumes, take an AI-led interview, and then get matched to roles, often the same day. 

• Gig Economy Redefined: 30,000+ human contractors across domains like software, law and medicine are helping “teach” models what good performance looks like. 

• Rapid Growth: A $100 M Series B jump valued the company at ~$2 B in early 2025. 

Why It Matters?

• Talent bottleneck = AI bottleneck: As AI models need better data and skilled people, Mercor flips the narrative - people become the leverage in a shifted economy of automation. 

• Redefining recruitment: Instead of pedigree and referrals, Mercor leans into performance-based matching, making hiring more meritocratic. 

• Youth leads the charge: At just 22, these founders illustrate how fast AI cycles now move, small teams can ship big.

Lessons for AI Founders

• Move fast, clarify the pain: The team started with a broken hiring process and applied AI where it made sense: even if imperfect.

• Focus on infrastructure, not just product: Their real moat is the supply chain of human-in-the-loop expertise feeding future models.

• Stay scrappy, scale when ready: They built the matching marketplace, tested manually, then layered AI.

What to Watch

• Will Mercor shift toward full-time roles beyond gigs? They’ve hinted yes. 

• How will regulation evolve around AI-mediated employment and global talent flows?

• With a valuation north of $10 B recently, what’s next? IPO? Partnerships with major tech players?

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Global AI News Highlights (Oct 22 – Oct 28)

🇺🇸 Americas

• NVIDIA and Oracle announce “Solstice,” the world’s largest AI supercomputer, contracted by the U.S. Department of Energy to accelerate fusion and material science.​

• Amazon signs a $38B partnership with OpenAI for exclusive GPT-5 access, making Amazon the primary cloud provider for OpenAI workloads.​

• U.S. Congress reviews the Blackwell chip export ban to China, aiming to block Nvidia shipments and preserve national AI supremacy.​

• Wall Street surges as AI stocks dominate: Nvidia, Palantir, and Amazon account for 82% of the S&P’s weekly gains.​

• Amazon and other U.S. tech giants announce 6,000+ job cuts in Q4, driven by expanded AI automation platforms replacing back-office roles.​

🇪🇺 Europe

• European Commission launches “Resource for AI Science in Europe,” creating a pan-European institute to centralize AI research and policy.​

• Europe commits $1.1B to AI in healthcare and clean energy, with France, Germany, and Denmark leading pilot consortia for cross-border projects.​

• European sector survey finds 30% of EU workers now use AI for project management, with mandated reporting of algorithmic decisions in finance.​

• EU opens public AI Act consultation on shortening regulatory timelines and reducing reporting burden for start-ups and SMEs.​

• Cambridge launches first UK sovereign AI compute platform for university, industry, and government collaborations, aiming to scale responsible enterprise AI.

🇨🇳 APAC

• SK Group, APEC, and Nvidia sign $3.5B agreement for Blackwell AI chip supply to build Korea’s first sovereign AI cloud infrastructure.​

• APAC data center construction hits a peak; new AI workloads double regional electricity demand, causing immediate sustainability reviews in Singapore and Sydney.​

• China’s President Xi proposes a global AI regulatory authority at APEC, seeking approval from Japan, Australia, and Indonesia.​

• IDC reports generative AI adoption in APAC exceeds global average; 62% of surveyed enterprises now use large language models for customer operations.​

• SK Group and four APAC governments pledge $1.6B for new semiconductor-AI R&D centers focused on edge computing and vehicle autonomy

🌍 Africa

• Morocco and Gabon announce a joint digital infrastructure project, launching AI skills training for 500,000 youth by 2027.​

• Africa AI Expo gathers 7,000 innovators in Cape Town, awarding $2M in funding for startups deploying African language models.​

• UNESCO publishes Africa AI economic impact forecast, projecting $2.9T GDP growth if nations scale local model training and cloud access.​

• Kora hosts Lagos AI Summit, convening investors for enterprise AI in agriculture, finance, and media.​

• AI-powered cyberattack incidents rise 54% YoY across five countries, prompting new government “AI Safety” units in Nigeria, Botswana, and Kenya

🇦🇺 Oceania

• Australian and NZ tech leaders meet in Sydney to draft a 2026 “AI Governance Roadmap,” naming skill shortages and regulatory gaps as top regional barriers.​

• ISACA survey finds only 8% of Oceania’s enterprises have formal AI risk management protocols, sparking an industry-wide call for urgent upskilling.

This Week’s Top 5 AI Startup Fundraising Rounds

Top 10 AI Unicorns — This Week’s Move

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