The global tech industry is buzzing with an unprecedented achievement: a trio of 22-year-old AI founders have officially become the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, the brilliant minds behind Mercor, an AI recruiting startup, have not only built a company valued at an astonishing $10 billion but have also surpassed Mark Zuckerberg’s record for achieving self-made billionaire status at the youngest age. This milestone underscores the explosive growth and incredible opportunities within artificial intelligence and highlights a new era of startup success driven by young tech entrepreneurs.
Mercor’s meteoric Rise: From India to USA Tech Talent
The journey of Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath (CTO), and Surya Midha (Board Chairman) is a testament to vision and relentless innovation. Co-founding Mercor in 2023, their initial focus was on bridging the tech talent gap by connecting skilled engineers in India with burgeoning companies in the U.S. for freelance coding opportunities. Their platform uniquely leveraged AI avatars for interviews and sophisticated matching algorithms, streamlining the recruitment process significantly. This model quickly gained traction, showcasing the immense demand for efficient, AI-powered solutions in the global hiring landscape. Hiremath and Midha, high school friends from Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, brought a competitive edge from their national championship-winning debate team days, a drive clearly translated into their entrepreneurial venture. Midha, a second-generation immigrant whose parents hail from New Delhi, further exemplifies the powerful India to USA connection fueling much of today’s tech innovation.
Mercor’s strategic expansion didn’t stop at recruitment. The company quickly diversified, moving into data labeling services for frontier AI labs like OpenAI, a critical component for training and refining large language models. This strategic pivot further solidified Mercor’s position at the forefront of the AI revolution. Their remarkable achievements didn’t go unnoticed; all three founders were recognized on Forbes’ prestigious 2025 Under 30 list, cementing their status as future leaders in the AI industry. Their success story, alongside their designation as Thiel Fellows (recipients of Peter Thiel’s grant for young innovators), serves as a powerful inspiration for aspiring tech entrepreneurs worldwide.
The Trailblazers: Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo of Scale AI
Before the Mercor trio captured headlines, the AI landscape celebrated other young self-made billionaires. Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo, the co-founders of Scale AI, paved the way, demonstrating the immense potential of AI data solutions. Alexandr Wang, a true prodigy born to Chinese immigrant physicists, dropped out of MIT at 19 to co-found Scale AI in 2016. The company quickly became a leader in providing data labeling and large language model evaluation services – essential infrastructure for any AI innovation.
Wang’s net worth soared, making him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at 24 in 2021. Scale AI’s influence expanded significantly, securing defense contracts from the United States Armed Forces and collaborating with the Pentagon to test and evaluate LLMs for military applications, showcasing its critical role in national AI strategy. In a significant move in June 2025, Meta Platforms acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI, valuing the company at over $29 billion. Following this, Wang stepped down as Scale AI’s CEO to become Meta’s Chief AI Officer, leading Meta Superintelligence Labs and charting the course for Meta’s AI leadership.
Lucy Guo, also a Chinese immigrant background, was another pivotal figure in Scale AI’s early success. Teaching herself to code in elementary school, Guo developed an innate understanding of technology. Despite dropping out of Carnegie Mellon and later leaving Scale AI due to product vision disagreements, she retained a substantial stake, contributing to her self-made billionaire status. In April 2025, Guo became the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire at age 30, surpassing Taylor Swift. Her entrepreneurial spirit continued with Passes, a creator platform that competes with Patreon and OnlyFans, raising $50 million, and Backend Capital, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage engineering startups. Her journey highlights the diverse paths to success and the growing prominence of women in tech.
The Future is AI, Young, and Global
The stories of Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, Surya Midha, Alexandr Wang, and Lucy Guo paint a vivid picture of the future of AI and the immense opportunities it presents. These young tech entrepreneurs, many with roots spanning from India to the USA, are not just building successful companies; they are redefining industries, from AI recruiting startup models to critical data labeling for advanced large language models. Their collective journey signifies that age is no barrier to monumental achievement in the innovation economy. As artificial intelligence continues to evolve at a breathtaking pace, these self-made billionaires stand as beacons of what is possible, inspiring a new generation to embrace AI innovation and pursue their entrepreneurial dreams on a global scale. The rapid ascent of these individuals underscores the transformative power of AI and the boundless potential for those bold enough to harness it.
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