Surpassing Mark Zuckerberg

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

All three founders 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, surpassing Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang.

The trio also reached billionaire status earlier than Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, who was 23 when he became a billionaire.

Met his co-founders through competitive debating

Midha grew up in San Jose, California, in a family with roots in Delhi, India, according to The Print newspaper.

He attended Bellarmine College Preparatory from 2017 to 2021 and became heavily involved in policy debate alongside Hiremath, a childhood friend he first met at age 10.

"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."

Foody also grew up in California and met Midha and Hiremath in high school, where they competed together on the debate team.

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

Buiding a billion-dollar company after dropping out of college

Midha was studying international relations, mathematics and economics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., while Foody enrolled there in 2021 to study business administration and economics. Hiremath, meanwhile, attended Harvard University for two years before leaving during his sophomore year.

In 2023, the three friends dropped out of college to build Mercor full time.

"I wouldn’t say there was some specific logical thing that gave me the confidence to pursue Mercor," Hiremath told The Harvard Crimson. "It was more so just an emotional pull, right, that feeling that you want to be working on the problem, you want to be working with the people that you’re working with, and it just feels right in terms of an opportunity to spend a bunch of time working on and dedicating your whole life to."

Mercor's origins trace back to a hackathon in São Paulo, where Midha and his co-founders identified an opportunity to connect companies with skilled engineers overseas while taking a commission on each placement. The startup initially focused on matching software developers, particularly from India, with U.S. companies seeking engineering talent.

As generative AI gained traction, Mercor expanded into providing "human-in-the-loop" services, recruiting experts to help train and evaluate AI models. Today, the company connects professionals including lawyers, doctors, consultants and engineers with projects designed to improve AI systems. These workers create testing frameworks and assess model outputs to help developers refine the technology.

"Everyone’s been focused on what models can do," Foody told Fortune in a December 2025 interview. "But the real opportunity is teaching them what only humans know—judgment, nuance, and taste."

Within nine months of launching the business, Midha, Foody and Hiremath had built Mercor into a company with a $1 million annualized revenue run rate. Two years later, investors valued the startup at $10 billion, making the three founders the world's youngest self-made billionaires.

Receiving $200,000 Thiel Fellowship

After leaving university, the three founders were selected for the Thiel Fellowship, a program created by billionaire investor Peter Thiel that awards young entrepreneurs $200,000 to pursue startups instead of completing college.

Thiel has long criticized traditional higher education.

"Higher education is the worst institution we have," Thiel said in the release announcing the 2025 fellowship class, as quoted by Fortune magazine. "For these exceptional fellows, we are providing an alternative."

The fellowship has supported several prominent technology entrepreneurs, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Figma co-founder Dylan Field and Scale AI founder Lucy Guo.

Transitioning from COO to chairman

Midha transitioned from chief operating officer to chairman in Oct. 2025 several months after Mercor hired former Uber product chief Sundeep Jain as its first president. Foody now serves as Mercor’s CEO, while Hiremath is chief technology officer.

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."

Despite his billionaire status, Midha has remained relatively low-profile. 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."