Midha and his co-founders, Brendan Foody and Adarsh Hiremath became the world’s three youngest self-made billionaires in Oct. 2025 after private investors valued AI recruiting startup Mercor at $10 billion, giving each an estimated net worth of $2.2 billion.

"It’s definitely crazy," Foody told Forbes. "It feels very surreal. Obviously beyond our wildest imaginations, insofar as anything that we could have anticipated two years ago."

All three founders, who were also recipients of the $200,000 Thiel Fellowship established by billionaire Peter Thiel to encourage young entrepreneurs to leave college and build startups, were 22 at the time.

But Midha, who is several months younger than his co-founders, has since become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, taking the title from ScaleAI's Alexandr Wang. Midha, Foody and Hiremath are also the youngest self-made billionaires ever to appear on 2026 Forbes’ Billionaires List, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg, who joined the ranking at age 23 nearly two decades ago.

Surya Midha,founder and chairman of AI recruiting firm Mercor. Photo courtesy of Mercor

From debate champion to AI billionaire

Born in Mountain View, California, Midha grew up in San Jose in a family with roots in Delhi, India, according to India's The Print. He attended Bellarmine College Preparatory from 2017 to 2021, where he became heavily involved in policy debate alongside future Mercor co-founder Hiremath.

"My partner and I were the first team in history to win all three national tournaments in policy debate: the Tournament of Champions (TOC), the National Debate Coaches Association Tournament (NDCA), and the National Speech and Debate Association Tournament," Midha wrote on his blog. "I was also individually ranked as the best speaker at both the TOC and NDCA."

He later enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., studying international relations, mathematics and economics. But by the spring of 2023, his attention had shifted from academics to entrepreneurship. He left Georgetown to launch Mercor with Hiremath and Foody.

Mercor’s business model was developed earlier in 2023 during a hackathon in São Paulo, Brazil, when the trio came up with a simple idea: matching companies with skilled overseas engineers, handling logistics and taking a share of each contract.

Their first client agreed to pay $500 a week for a developer, according to Fortune magazine. Mercor paid the engineer around 70% of the fee and kept the rest as a service charge. What began as a talent-matching platform later evolved into a business tied closely to the rapid growth of AI.

Mercor initially focused on connecting developers, particularly from India, with U.S. companies seeking coders. But as large language models such as ChatGPT gained popularity, the startup shifted toward "human-in-the-loop" services.

The company now uses AI to match specialists in fields such as law, medicine and engineering with projects aimed at refining and training AI systems. Its clients include OpenAI and Google DeepMind. It recruits workers from a wide range of backgrounds to help train AI systems, from chess champions to wine enthusiasts. Job postings typically do not disclose which AI companies are hiring, and workers must sign non-disclosure agreements before taking the roles.

Mercor said the AI training jobs it recruits for pay an average of $105 an hour, though some specialists earn far more. One listing said psychiatry experts could make up to $350 an hour to "design clinical scenarios, evaluate model outputs against evidence-based standards and help shape how the next generation of AI reasons about mental health care," as reported by CBC News.

Mercor's founders (left to right): Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody and Surya Midha. Photo courtesy of Mercor's Instagram

The company expanded rapidly after raising $32 million in Series A funding in Sept. 2024. The company then secured another $100 million in Series B funding in Jan. 2025, pushing its valuation to $2 billion. In Oct. 2025, Mercor announced a new Series C funding round valuing the company at $10 billion, according to CNBC.

The valuation turned Foody, Hiremath and Midha into some of the newest billionaires of the AI boom, with each holding an estimated 22% stake in the company, Forbes estimates. "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 said. "My life did such a 180 in such a short period of time."

Mercor now manages more than 30,000 contractors, who are collectively paid over $1.5 million daily. The startup said these workers help train AI agents by "sharing knowledge, experience, and context that can’t be captured in code alone."

Foody serves as Mercor’s CEO, while Hiremath is chief technology officer. Midha transitioned from chief operating officer to chairman in Oct. 2025. Despite his billionaire status, Midha has remained relatively low-profile compared to many Silicon Valley founders. In his blog, he has described enjoying Formula One, tea, coffee and Halloween, which he called "a holiday where pretending to be something you're not feels pleasantly relatable."

In a post on X announcing his transition to chairman, Midha said he and his co-founders had "took a leap of faith" when they launched Mercor from a "tiny office" in Palo Alto, California.

"None of us could have imagined the scale and impact the company would achieve in such a short time," he wrote. "This decision comes from a place of conviction, not doubt. I believe in our mission more deeply than ever and have complete faith in the team to carry Mercor into its next chapter."