Three 22-Year-Old Founders of AI Startup Mercor Become World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires

San Francisco | November 2, 2025 Three former high school friends have rewritten the record books of entrepreneurship by becoming the world’s youngest self-made billionaires at just 22 years old. Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, the co-founders of the artificial intelligence recruitment platform Mercor, have now surpassed Mark Zuckerberg’s long-held record—Zuckerberg became a billionaire at 23 when Facebook went public in 2008. According to Forbes, Mercor’s latest $350 million funding round has pushed its valuation to a staggering $10 billion, officially elevating CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath, and board chairman Surya Midha into the billionaire ranks. The San Francisco-based startup leverages AI to transform how companies recruit talent worldwide, rapidly becoming one of the most promising ventures in the tech sector. The trio’s achievement places them among an elite circle of young tech entrepreneurs. Their success follows that of Polymarket’s CEO Shayne Coplan, who became a billionaire at 27 just weeks earlier, and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, who held the title before them at age 28. Lucy Guo, Wang’s cofounder, had previously become the youngest self-made woman billionaire at 30, briefly dethroning pop icon Taylor Swift in that category. What makes Mercor’s story particularly remarkable is its origin: two of the three founders, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha, are Indian-Americans and childhood friends from Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California. Both were debate team members and made history as the first pair ever to win all three national policy debate tournaments in a single year. Surya Midha, a second-generation immigrant, shared on his personal website that his parents moved to the U.S. from New Delhi. “My parents immigrated to the US from New Delhi, India. I was born in Mountain View and raised in San Jose,” he wrote, reflecting on his roots and journey. His co-founder Hiremath followed a more technical path, enrolling in Harvard University to study computer science before dropping out midway to build Mercor full-time. “The thing that’s crazy for me is, if I weren’t working on Mercor, I would have just graduated college a couple months ago,” Hiremath told Forbes. “My life did such a 180 in such a short period of time.” Meanwhile, Midha pursued a degree in Foreign Studies at Georgetown University, where he met Foody, who was majoring in economics. Both eventually left Georgetown around the same time Hiremath exited Harvard. Their shared leap of faith led to the creation of Mercor, a platform that has since drawn attention from major investors and the tech community for its innovative approach to AI-powered recruitment. All three are also recipients of the prestigious Thiel Fellowship, awarded to young innovators under 23 who choose to build startups instead of completing college. From dorm room brainstorming sessions to billion-dollar boardrooms, Foody, Hiremath, and Midha’s journey embodies the bold ambition and rapid disruption defining the new generation of tech visionaries. Three 22-Year-Olds Become World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaires High school friends Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha have made history as the world’s youngest self-made billionaires at just 22. Their AI recruiting startup, Mercor, has been valued at $10 billion after a massive funding round. The Indian-American founders dropped out of Harvard and Georgetown to build the company from scratch, later earning the Thiel Fellowship for their innovation. Their success dethrones Mark Zuckerberg’s long-held record and marks a defining moment for young entrepreneurs proving that billion-dollar dreams can start in a dorm room and reshape the future of tech.