An AI startup powering ChatGPT’s expertise has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to train AI models that are designed to replace human experts in the future.
Mercor has finalized a funding deal that would value the firm at roughly five times its price in February, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The company raised $350 million from investors, including Felicis, Benchmark and General Catalyst, making it one of the most highly valued players in the AI data-labeling industry. People familiar with the discussions say the new funding round would raise the company’s valuation to $10 billion.
Mercor’s platform connects a global workforce of 30,000 contractors who provide expert feedback to large AI models developed by clients such as OpenAI and Anthropic. These contractors label data, review AI-generated answers and evaluate reasoning to help improve accuracy and safety.
The startup’s business model is straightforward: clients pay an average rate of about $85 an hour for specialized labor, of which Mercor keeps 30% to 35% with the rest going straight to the pockets of a contractor.
Some roles reach much higher as doctors can earn $170 an hour to evaluate medical answers from AI or review model-generated research papers. Other roles in Mercor’s contractor network include mathematicians, software engineers, lawyers, bankers and journalists.
Mercor’s rise underscores the intensifying competition in the data-labeling sector, where startups race to supply the expertise needed to train increasingly capable models. The company’s revenue has quadrupled since Meta paid $14 billion for a 49% stake in rival Scale AI.
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