Mercor, a startup that connects companies like Openai e Half With the domain experts necessary to train and perfect their models to the basic basis, it is under discussion with investors for a Serie C round, according to two sources that are familiar with the agreement interviews and a marketing document seen by Techcrunch.

Felicis, a return investor, is taking into consideration the doubling of the company for Serie C, according to two sources. Felicis refused to comment.

The company is currently targeting an evaluation of $ 10 billion or more, said a person. It has increased from a target evaluation of $ 8 billion that the company discarded a couple of months ago, said a person. However, the terms of the final agreement may still change.

The company has told potential investors who already has more offers. The VC contacted Mercor in advance with the company’s evaluation offers as much as $ 10 billionThe information reported preciously.

Techcrunch also includes that the company has bushings on at least two new investors to raise funds for the potential agreement through vehicles for special purposes (SPV).

The previous round of the company was announced in February, a $ 100 million Serie B in assessments of $ 2 billion led by Felicis.

Founded in 2022, Mercor is approaching $ 450 million in a returned annual running rate, said a person. The company told Techcrunch in February that its annual revenues (calculated by multiplying the last month by 12) had reached $ 75 million at that time. In March, Mercor Brendan Foody CEO published on X that arrives $ 100 million.

The company told investors that it is on the right way to hit the $ 500 million faster than Thansphen The startup that makes the cursor assistant to the coding AI, according to a family of sources with the situation. Anysphere has struck notoriously $ 500 million Upon arrival per year after the launch of its product. Unlike Anysphere, who is still burning money, Mercor has generated a profit of $ 6 million in the first half of the year, Forbes reported.

Mercor gains entry by providing experts in specialized domain to perform an artificial intelligence model training – such as scientists, doctors and lawyers – and by charging a time research rate and a combination rate for their work.

The Company claims to provide data contractors to five best artificial intelligence laboratories, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Openai, as well as in Tesla and Nvidia. According to sources, an out of measure of its return comes from a subset of these brands, including.

To further diversify its business model, Mercor told investors that it is adding more software infrastructures for reinforcement learning – a training method in which the decisions of a model or agent are verified or topics, allowing them to incorporate feedback and improve over time. The company also intends to build an A-Powred recruitment market.

However, Mercor has to face competition from companies such as Surge Ai, who is reported in the interviews to collect funding to a $ 25 billion of evaluationAs well as by Turing Labs and other data labeling companies as scales to which are also expanding in RL services. Some believe it The intake platform recently launched by Openii He could lead the AI ​​giant to create his own man -fueled RL training service.

When we reacted for how, Foody told Techcrunch, “we tried to collect” and, “we refuse the offers every month”. He also said that the ART of the company is higher than $ 450 million. However, he clarified that the company’s revenues included the total that customers pay Mercor for services before their contractors receive their part. He added that this is a common accounting practiced recommended by Audit companies and used by competitors Surge Ai and Scale Ai.

The startup was co-founded in 2023 by Thiel Fellows and Harvard Dropouts Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh ​​Hiremath (CTO) and Surya Midha (COO). All three co-founders are still twenty years old. To bring the company to the next level, Mercor recently appointed Sundeep Jain, a Uber train product manager with decades of experience, as reported by the first president, Forbes.

Mercor was recently sued by complete stairs to the embezzlement of commercial secrets. Scale Ai argues that one of its employees employed that he later joined Mercor “stole more than 100 confidential documents regarding the strategies of the strategies of stairs and other proposed information”, according to a copy of the Techcrunch cause previously Revision.

Maxwell Zeff has contributed to relationships