Surya Midha

Forbes wrote in March 2026 that he was born in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry’s Bay Area to Indian immigrant parents; Global Indian wrote in December 2024 that his parents had immigrated to the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry from New Delhi. Forbes wrote in October 2025 that all three founders of Mercor are the children of software engineers, and that his birthday is in June.⁠[1][2][3][4]

Forbes writes that he and Adarsh Hiremath were childhood friends who met at elementary school debate tournaments; Gazetteer SF writes that the two grew up together and met when they were 10 years old.⁠[3][5]

He attended Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys secondary school in San Jose, California, and joined its speech and debate team. Gazetteer SF writes that four years after he and Adarsh Hiremath met, the two met Brendan FoodyBrendan FoodyBrendan Foody is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Mercor, a company that supplies AI labs with domain experts and training data, with Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha and serves as its CEO; he is a member of the 2024 class of the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry on the debate team at Bellarmine College Preparatory, and that the three quickly grew close, traveling the country to compete at tournaments.⁠[2][6][5]

In November 2025 KTVU quoted Rod Jemison, the principal of Bellarmine College Preparatory: “Brendan, Adarsh, and Surya were some of Bellarmine’s top debaters in its history.” He said that the three had been captains of the school’s speech and debate team, which has now been ranked top in the country for four years in a row, and that their leadership and competitive abilities helped to usher in the current era of Bellarmine Speech and Debate.⁠[7][6]

Bellarmine College Preparatory’s list of 2019 national results shows that at the National Speech and Debate Tournament in Dallas, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, he and Adarsh Hiremath placed eighth in Policy Debate; the school writes that by ranking in the top 14 in the nation, the pair earned an auto-qualification.⁠[8]

Bellarmine College Preparatory writes that at the end of the 2019–2020 season its speech and debate team competed in the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) tournament held during the week of June 14–20, which took place remotely because of COVID-19 restrictions. He and Adarsh Hiremath were ranked fifth in the country in Policy Debate, and Brendan Foody and Avi Upadhyayula eighth; he, Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody and others thereby earned automatic qualification for the next year’s national tournament without needing to compete in the national qualification tournament.⁠[9]

In its report on the 2021 season, Bellarmine College Preparatory writes that he and Adarsh Hiremath won the final round of policy debate at the NSDA Nationals and became national champions. Their coach, Aaron Langerman, said that the two had had the most impressive policy debate career of any team in Bellarmine’s history, winning three of the most competitive national tournaments: the National Debate Coaches Association (NDCA) tournament, the Tournament of Champions (TOC) and the NSDA Nationals; he added that the school had never won the NDCA or the TOC before that year and had won the NSDA Nationals in policy debate only once, in 2006. The report states: “Adarsh and Surya will officially go down in history as BCP Speech and Debate legends.”⁠[10]

A profile that FelicisFelicisFelicis (whose funds and earlier brand use the name Felicis Ventures) is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, founded in 2006 by former Google product manager Aydin Senkut; it has invested in companies including Shopify, Canva and Adyen.Open the full entry published in July 2026 writes that he and Adarsh Hiremath formed a historically formidable duo, becoming “the first team to ever win all three national tournaments in policy debate.” Gazetteer SF writes that on the high school debate team the two won three major national championships as a team, and Forbes wrote in March 2026 that he was a national debate champion in high school.⁠[11][5][1]

He graduated from Bellarmine College Preparatory in 2021 and then enrolled, together with Brendan Foody, at Georgetown University, while Adarsh Hiremath went to Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry. Forbes wrote in September 2024 that at Georgetown he became Brendan Foody’s roommate.⁠[7][6][5][4]

In April 2022 The Hoya listed him as “SFS ’25”; Global Indian writes that he was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in “Foreign Studies” at Georgetown University.⁠[12][2]

KTVU, quoting the principal, Rod Jemison, wrote in March and November 2025 that since leaving Bellarmine College Preparatory the three had continued to give back to the school by volunteering as debate coaches.⁠[6][7]

The Hoya wrote in April 2022 that Brendan Foody, he and Adarsh Hiremath, then a first-year at Harvard University, had co-founded Mercor in January 2022; Forbes, Gazetteer SF, KTVU and TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry write that the three founded Mercor in 2023. Mercor’s press release of September 2024 states that the three co-founders met doing competitive debate in high school in the Bay Area and began ideating on company-building as college freshmen at Georgetown University and Harvard University. KTVU wrote in March 2025 that, as Brendan Foody explained, the idea began in their dorm rooms when the three were only 19.⁠[12][3][5][7][13][14][6]

The Felicis profile writes that the three developed the idea at a three-week hackathon in São Paulo, Brazil: talented engineers from the Indian Institutes of Technology were struggling to find jobs while American companies wanted their skills, so Mercor contracted out highly skilled software engineers in India by the hour, automated the processes for reviewing résumés, conducting interviews and making hiring decisions, started by contracting engineers to friends at Harvard University for projects and then hustled to scale it up. Fortune wrote in November 2025 that within nine months Brendan Foody and his co-founders, his high school friends and debate teammates Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha, had built the early concept into a business with about $1 million in annualized revenue.⁠[11][15]

Gazetteer SF writes that the three split up the executive functions, with Brendan Foody as chief executive, Adarsh Hiremath as chief technology officer and him as chief operating officer; KTVU and TechCrunch listed their roles the same way in 2025.⁠[5][6][13]

The Hoya writes that Brendan Foody, he and Adarsh Hiremath were chosen out of 60 teams to win the Entrepreneurship Challenge, Georgetown University’s largest annual pitch competition, on April 7, receiving a $10,000 prize. The article writes that Mercor was then pairing teams of skilled engineers with startups to meet their development needs and had clients at Georgetown University and beyond, such as Pentada, a platform for finance and commerce apps; Adarsh Hiremath said that Mercor sourced technical talent through the top Indian Institutes of Technology, and the article mentions that the company planned to sponsor a hackathon at IIT Kharagpur on April 27.⁠[12]

Forbes wrote in September 2024 that in August 2023, weeks after they had finished their second year of college, Brendan Foody met him and Adarsh Hiremath to persuade them to drop out of college; after Brendan Foody’s pitch, he turned to Adarsh Hiremath, the partner with whom he had won a national policy debate championship two years earlier, and asked how hard this could really be.⁠[4]

KTVU writes that in 2023, during their sophomore year, the three dropped out of college to start Mercor, and that they returned to the Bay Area and set up the company’s headquarters in San Francisco; Global Indian also writes that they dropped out in their second year. The Harvard Crimson wrote in March 2025 that he and Brendan Foody officially withdrew from Georgetown University at the same time that Adarsh Hiremath dropped out of Harvard University. Mercor’s press release of September 2024 states that in 2023 the three dropped out and began building Mercor.⁠[6][7][2][16][14][17]

Forbes wrote in September 2024 that after spending a month in New York, Mercor’s three founders moved to San Francisco in the fall of 2023 to work on the startup full-time.⁠[4]

The Felicis profile writes that in August 2023, just months after founding Mercor from their college dorm rooms, he, Brendan Foody and Adarsh Hiremath were at TeslaTeslaTesla is an American electric vehicle and energy company whose businesses span automobiles, solar energy, and battery energy storage. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, its shares are listed on Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA.Open the full entry’s offices in the San Francisco Bay Area meeting the co-founding team of xAI, without Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry; two days before the meeting a Mercor customer had introduced the co-founders to the xAI team, which was impressed by the caliber of engineers they had access to.⁠[11]

On March 20, 2024, the Thiel Foundation announced the 20 members of the 2024 class of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry; he was 17th on the list, which gives his hometown as San Jose, California. The announcement describes Mercor as using AI vetting to create opportunities for millions of smart people who were previously undiscovered because of society’s misplaced reliance on flawed signals such as the prestige on someone’s résumé. It states that the Thiel Fellowship, established in 2011, provides each fellow with $100,000 and access to a network of tech founders, investors, scientists and former fellows, and that fellows commit to focusing full-time on their projects, companies or ideas; the new class joined 270 previous fellows. Mercor’s other two co-founders, Adarsh Hiremath and Brendan Foody, were in the same class.⁠[18]

The Harvard Crimson writes that in March 2024 the three co-founders received $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year program given on condition that recipients drop out of college. Mercor’s press release of September 2024 states that all three founders had received the Thiel Fellowship earlier that year; Forbes writes that all three founders are Thiel Fellows, and Global Indian that all three are 2024 Thiel Fellows.⁠[16][14][3][2]

On September 19, 2024, Mercor announced a $30 million Series A at a $250 million valuation, led by Victor Lazarte and Bill GurleyBill GurleyBill Gurley is a venture investor, author and podcast host who spent many years as a Benchmark general partner, investing in and serving on boards of technology businesses including Uber and Zillow. He moved from computer engineering to securities research and became known for internet marketplace investments, the Above the Crowd blog and the career book Runnin’ Down a Dream.Open the full entry of Benchmark, with Victor Lazarte joining the board and General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry, Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, Jack Dorsey, Adam D’AngeloAdam D’AngeloAdam D’Angelo is the co-founder and CEO of Quora, a former chief technology officer of Facebook, and a director of OpenAI. From the question-and-answer and knowledge-sharing business he developed the AI chat platform Poe, and he also invests in technology companies. His career spans programming, internet product management, and artificial intelligence governance.Open the full entry, Larry Summers and Chris Re among the participants. Global Indian quotes his own words on his website: “In September 2024, we announced our $30m Series A at a $250m valuation led by Benchmark.”⁠[14][2]

Forbes wrote in September 2024 that of the three founders, chief executive Brendan Foody focused on product and sales, he as chief operating officer on operations and enterprise contracts, and chief technology officer Adarsh Hiremath on engineering and machine learning.⁠[4]

Global Indian wrote on December 11, 2024 that the three founders had been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in AI, giving him as Mercor’s chief operating officer; Forbes writes that all three appeared on its 2025 Under 30 list.⁠[2][3]

KTVU wrote on March 18, 2025 that three Bay Area high school classmates who had dropped out of college were behind Mercor, an AI recruiting startup valued at $2 billion, that they were only 21 years old, and that they were among the youngest founders of a billion-dollar startup.⁠[6]

On September 3, 2025, Scale AI sued its former sales employee Eugene Ling and Mercor, alleging that Eugene Ling had taken more than 100 confidential documents concerning Scale’s customer strategies and other proprietary information, and bringing a claim of trade secret misappropriation against Mercor. TechCrunch published the statement he emailed as Mercor’s co-founder: “While Mercor has hired many people who departed Scale, we have no interest in any of Scale’s trade secrets,” adding that Mercor was in fact intentionally running its business in a different way. He said that Eugene Ling had informed the company that he had old documents in a personal Google Drive, which Mercor had never accessed, and that Mercor had reached out to Scale six days earlier offering to have Eugene Ling destroy the files or reach a different resolution and was awaiting a response.⁠[19]

Forbes wrote in April 2026 that in May 2025 Mercor hired Sundeep Jain, UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry’s former product chief, as its first president, and that several months after he arrived, co-founder and chief operating officer Surya Midha stepped away from day-to-day operations, transitioning to the role of chairman of the board in October 2025. Gazetteer SF writes that in October 2025 he announced on X that he was “stepping away” from his role as chief operating officer and moving to the role of board chairman. His Forbes profile likewise states that he moved from chief operating officer to chairman in October 2025.⁠[20][5][17]

Gazetteer SF wrote in May 2026 that Sundeep Jain, the former chief product officer at Uber, joined Mercor in May 2025 and that people who experienced it saw Sundeep Jain’s focus on operations as having pushed him, then chief operating officer, to the periphery.⁠[5]

Gazetteer SF writes that Adarsh Hiremath wrote him a heartfelt letter on X: “Surya has been my role model, thought partner, and most importantly, best friend,” adding, “Surya, I will miss you deeply.” Brendan Foody replied briefly: “There would be no Mercor without you,” and wrote: “As your friend, I’m so proud of you for making this bittersweet decision to explore what’s next.”⁠[5]

After Mercor announced a $350 million funding round led by Felicis at a $10 billion valuation, Forbes wrote on October 30, 2025 that Mercor had minted the world’s youngest self-made billionaires, its three 22-year-old founders: chief executive Brendan Foody, chief technology officer Adarsh Hiremath and board chairman Surya Midha, each with a stake of roughly 22% in the company by Forbes’s estimate. Forbes writes that he is the youngest of the three, by roughly two months; the previous holder of the distinction, PolymarketPolymarketPolymarket is a prediction market platform founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020, on which users buy and sell shares in the outcomes of political, sports, financial, cultural, and other events, with trading prices regarded as the market’s estimate of the probability that an event will occur. It rose to prominence during the 2024 US election, returned to the US market in 2025 by acquiring a licensed exchange and clearinghouse, and received a major investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, while facing gambling-regulation and insider-trading scrutiny in US states and several countries.Open the full entry chief executive Shayne CoplanShayne CoplanShayne Coplan is the founder and chief executive officer of Polymarket, the prediction market platform he founded in 2020, and advocates using market prices to aggregate people’s judgments about the probability of events. He attended New York University before leaving to start a company, and has led Polymarket’s fundraising, its return to the U.S. market, and its product expansion.Open the full entry, had held it for just 20 days.⁠[3][7]

Forbes’s list of the world’s youngest billionaires, published on March 10, 2026, states that a record 35 people under 30 were on Forbes’s latest World’s Billionaires list, and that the world’s youngest self-made billionaires were the newcomers Surya Midha, Brendan Foody and Adarsh Hiremath, each 22 years old and worth $2.2 billion. The article writes that, being a couple of months younger than his co-founders, he is now the youngest self-made billionaire of all, taking the title from Scale AI’s Alexandr WangAlexandr WangAlexandr Wang is an artificial intelligence entrepreneur, a co-founder and former chief executive officer of Scale AI. He joined Meta in June 2025 as the company’s first chief AI officer and leads Meta Superintelligence Labs. His work spans AI training data, model evaluation, government applications, and personal agents.Open the full entry on the previous year’s ranking, and that he and his co-founders and fellow Thiel Fellows are also the youngest self-made billionaires ever to make the Forbes Billionaires list, beating out Mark ZuckerbergMark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, Chairman and CEO of Meta, and a co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. His work spans social networking, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, who debuted at age 23 two decades earlier. The page description of his Forbes profile ranks him No. 1913 on Forbes’s 2026 Billionaires list.⁠[1][17]

Gazetteer SF’s report of May 5, 2026 writes that the former employees it interviewed said he was always the most thoughtful of the co-founders, one unnamed former employee saying: “He generally cares about people and has a strong sense of morals.” The report writes that one former employee said they had not seen Brendan Foody and Adarsh Hiremath talk since he “was pushed out-slash-left,” and that the former employees say Adarsh Hiremath and he remain friends.⁠[5]

Forbes wrote on July 9, 2026 that Mercor was in talks to raise $500 million at a $20 billion valuation; the article named Brendan Foody and Adarsh Hiremath as co-chief executives and him as board chairman, and estimated that if the round closed each of the three 23-year-old founders would be worth $4.3 billion. A Mercor spokesperson declined to comment on the founders’ net worths.⁠[21]

His Forbes profile shows that as of November 2, 2026, Forbes’s real-time estimate of his net worth was $2.2 billion, ranking him No. 1851 in the world; the profile gives his age as 23 and his source of wealth as AI software, self-made.⁠[17]

His Forbes profile states that he is a citizen of the United States, lives in San Francisco, California, and is single.⁠[17]

Forbes wrote in October 2025 that Mercor’s three founders said they had not bought anything flashy because they did not have the time.⁠[3]

Forbes wrote in September 2024 that he and Adarsh Hiremath were troubled by an unfair labor market in the developing world, which led them to launch Mercor. He said that they found it deeply wrong that hiring processes arbitrarily screen out about half of applicants on the basis of their résumés, prestigious work experience or particular educational backgrounds, and that building a more meritocratic way of hiring is the biggest lever on people’s quality of life.⁠[4]

Forbes writes that Brendan Foody defines success as building a unified global labor market, while he gave a simpler version: getting jobs for a billion people would make him really happy.⁠[4]

Mercor: Official website: https://www.mercor.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

X: Public account: https://x.com/suryamidha (opens in a new window).⁠[5]