How AI is reshaping work and who gets to do it, according to Mercor’s CEO
Three-year-old startup Mercor has become a $10 billion middleman in AI’s data gold rush. The company connects AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic with former employees of Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and law firms, paying them up to $200 per hour to share their industry expertise and train the AI models that their former employers could eventually automate.
Today we bring you a conversation with CEO Brendan Foody of this year’s Disrupt, where he explained why AI labs need highly skilled contractors instead of crowdsourced labor, how Scale AI’s problems accelerated Mercor’s rise, and why he thinks the entire economy will converge on training AI agents.
Listen to the full episode and hear more about:
- How Foody went from AWS credit counseling in high school to a $10 billion valuation
- Why the top 10-20% of contractors provide the majority of model improvements, and how Mercor finds them
- The gray area between employee knowledge and trade secrets (and whether Goldman Sachs should worry)
- Why Foody believes all knowledge work will eventually become training data for AI agents
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