Analysis
Mercor, the AI training-data company that pays experts to evaluate and improve frontier models, announced a $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation on November 10, 2026, in a post by co-founder and CEO Brendan Foody. The round included an employee tender. Mercor's post names no lead investor; participants include Benchmark, Felicis, General Catalyst, Nvidia, Salesforce, Zoom, funds managed by affiliates of Apollo, G Squared, Glade Brook Capital, Sapphire Ventures, StepStone Group and XTX Ventures. The SaaS News reported the same $750 million and $20 billion figures.
The close settles a story Pulse covered in August, when Mercor was reported to be in talks at about $20 billion. What changed: the valuation held, the round is now closed and announced by the company, and it carries a secondary component for employees.
What does Mercor do?
Mercor runs a network of "more than five million experts" who are paid to train frontier AI models, per its announcement. The company says it spent two years building infrastructure to train and evaluate frontier models, and that those capabilities are now adopted by big tech, open-model developers, application-layer companies and the Fortune 500. Its pitch to enterprises is custom evaluations built on a company's actual workflows. The SaaS News says Mercor will use the money to accelerate investment in its evaluation and post-training infrastructure. Mercor's site lists San Francisco as its home.
“The close settles a story Pulse covered in August, when Mercor was reported to be in talks at about $20 billion.”
Mercor has not published revenue in the Series D post. StartupFortune reported that Mercor "had passed $2 billion in gross annualized revenue," citing a Foody post on X. Gross annualized revenue in an expert marketplace includes what Mercor pays its experts, so it is not comparable to a software company's ARR.
Mercor funding history and valuation
TechCrunch reported in October 2025 that Mercor raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation in a Series C led by Felicis Ventures (TechCrunch).
Felicis had also led Mercor's prior $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation, per the same report. Benchmark and General Catalyst participated as existing investors, and Robinhood Ventures joined. Our Mercor company page tracks the full round history.
Value Add VC data
- Before Oct 2025, Series B -- $100M at $2B, led by Felicis Ventures (TechCrunch)
- Oct 2025, Series C -- $350M at $10B, led by Felicis Ventures (TechCrunch)
- Nov 2026, Series D -- $750M at $20B, no lead named (Mercor)
The new price is 2x the Series C mark and 10x the Series B mark. The Series D alone is more than double the $350 million Series C.
Who are Mercor's competitors?
The expert-data market has two reference prices. Scale AI "was valued above $29 billion after Meta's investment," and Surge AI "has reportedly been seeking a valuation of about $15 billion on more than $1 billion in trailing revenue," per StartupFortune.
At $20 billion, Mercor now sits between them on valuation. The revenue figures are not like for like: Mercor's is gross annualized, Surge's is reported as trailing.
The bear case is concentration. Mercor's growth rides frontier-lab training budgets; if a handful of labs account for most of the work, one lab bringing evaluation in-house or switching vendors moves the revenue line. Nvidia and Salesforce as investors are also potential customers, which can blur how much of the demand is arm's length.
The number to get next is net revenue: what Mercor keeps after paying five million experts.
