mercor

Mercor, a $10 billion AI startup, confirms it was caught up in a major security incident | Fortune

2026-04-02 16:10:00 UTC

The high-flying startup that provides AI training data to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta confirms it was hit by a “supply-chain attack.”

Mercor Hit by LiteLLM Supply Chain Attack

2026-04-02 16:10:00 UTC

The AI recruiting firm is investigating the incident as Lapsus$ claimed the theft of 4TB of Mercor data.

Mercor confirms security incident tied to LiteLLM supply chain attack

2026-04-02 16:10:00 UTC

Although the LiteLLM attack was reportedly tied to a group called TeamPCP, the hacking gang Lapsus$ claimed on its website that it obtained hundreds of gigabytes of Mercor’s data.

Mercor.io Corporation (Mercor) is an American artificial intelligence (AI) hiring startup that provides experts to train AI models and chatbots. The company's three founders became the youngest self-made billionaires in 2025. The company is headquartered in 181 Fremont, San Francisco.

Mercor was founded in 2023 by Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, three Bay Area high school friends who competed together on the Bellarmine College Preparatory Speech and Debate Team. The three dropped out of college to focus on Mercor, and were later awarded Thiel Fellowships. The company was originally formed to connect freelance programmers in India with companies in the United States, and they developed an AI platform to interview programmers and match them with hiring companies. The company shifted focus to data labeling, matching expert contractors with AI companies like OpenAI looking for help to train their algorithms.