By Spotlight Wirelast Updated
Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha were college students when they first created their artificial intelligence (AI) interviewer. Initially, they were using the AI interview as a screening tool for engineers in India and matching those engineers with US startup jobs. Now, their AI interview has screened around half a million candidates, and their AI job marketplace, Mercor, is valued at $2 billion.Mercor now works predominantly with some of the largest AI labs and tech companies in the world, including OpenAI and Meta, to screen talent using their AI interview and staff them on short-term contracts. 鈥淚nitially, we were just placing tech grads in India with startups run by our contemporaries,鈥 said Virat Talwar, a product manager at Mercor, and its first employee, 鈥渂ut not long after, we realised that we could generalise the products we had built to a much larger market.鈥. Products spearheaded by Talwar and the Mercor team have now processed close to 500,000 applicants, placing over 5,000 people around the world in part-time and full-time opportunities.A large amount of the contract work that members of Mercor鈥檚 talent pool now do revolves around evaluating the capabilities of AI models, and working on projects that help cutting-edge AI researchers. Talent on the platform is global, while they have people from the US, Europe, and Latin America, a large part of the talent pool is based in India. In fact, around half of the company鈥檚 internal team is based in India. 鈥淭he benefit of starting with an Indian talent pool is that we were able to attract and hire some of the best young Indian tech talent internally,鈥 says Talwar, who is based in San Francisco but grew up in Delhi before moving abroad to study at Harvard University. One of the members of the team based in India is Soumi De, the company鈥檚 Head of Sourcing. She helps support the global sourcing strategy that fuels Mercor鈥檚 AI marketplace, playing a pivotal role in building the supply engine that matches thousands of candidates to cutting-edge AI opportunities. 鈥淥ur goal is simple but ambitious: to deliver the right talent at the right time, every time,鈥 said De. 鈥淲e鈥檝e built an adaptive sourcing system that鈥檚 designed not just for growth, but for precision and velocity.鈥濃淕rowing up in India and majoring in computer science, I saw how disconnected hiring often is from actual job performance first-hand,鈥 said De. 鈥淭op-tier talent would get overlooked because they didn鈥檛 鈥榗rack鈥 the process, while others who performed well in interviews didn鈥檛 always thrive on the job.鈥 Mercor is now focusing on creating a talent experience shaped by a deeply practical approach to sourcing. 鈥淭raditional recruiting needs to adapt. It shouldn’t be about jumping through hoops; it should be about capability, clarity, and match. That鈥檚 what we鈥檙e building at Mercor.鈥 De believes this shift isn鈥檛 just progressive, it鈥檚 inevitable. 鈥淐ompanies can鈥檛 afford the inefficiencies of outdated processes anymore. Mercor is ahead of the curve in shaping a modern hiring ecosystem, one where both companies and candidates win.鈥滱s the hiring landscape continues to evolve, Mercor鈥檚 model is proving that a more equitable, performance-based approach isn鈥檛 just idealistic, it鈥檚 operationally sound and commercially necessary. Mercor is not just riding the future of work, it鈥檚 helping build it.Disclaimer – The above content is non-editorial, and TIL hereby disclaims any and all warranties, expressed or implied, relating to it, and does not guarantee, vouch for or necessarily endorse any of the content.