Mercor raised $750 million in a Series D round that values the San Francisco company at $20 billion. The company announced the deal on November 10, 2026.
The new price is double the $10 billion valuation Mercor reached in October 2025. The round included a tender offer for employee shares. Mercor has not said how the $750 million splits between new capital and that share sale.
Mercor pays domain experts to train and test AI models, mostly for frontier AI labs. With this round, it plans to sell the same evaluation and post-training work to large companies in other industries.
Mercor Series D funding: deal terms and investors
Mercor did not name a lead investor for the Series D. Nvidia, Salesforce and Zoom joined as corporate backers, according to SiliconANGLE.
Returning investors Benchmark, Felicis and General Catalyst also took part. The rest of the list includes Fundomo, G Squared, Glade Brook Capital, Sapphire Ventures, StepStone Group, XTX Ventures and funds managed by affiliates of Apollo.
| Detail | Mercor Series D |
|---|---|
| Amount | $750 million |
| Valuation | $20 billion |
| Announced | November 10, 2026 |
| Lead investor | Not disclosed |
| Corporate investors | Nvidia, Salesforce, Zoom |
| Structure | New capital plus employee tender offer |
Nvidia has backed dozens of AI companies over the past two years. Mercor is the latest addition to Nvidia’s growing list of startup bets.
Mercor valuation history from Series A to Series D
Mercor’s valuation has risen 80-fold since its Series A in September 2024. Benchmark led that round at a $250 million valuation.
Felicis then led two rounds in a row. The Series B in February 2025 valued Mercor at $2 billion. The Series C in October 2025 lifted it to $10 billion.
Each step up has been smaller than the last. The Series B price was eight times the Series A. The Series C was five times the Series B, and the Series D doubled the Series C.
| Round | Date | Amount | Valuation | Lead investor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | Not confirmed | $3.6 million | Not disclosed | General Catalyst |
| Series A | September 2024 | $30 million | $250 million | Benchmark |
| Series B | February 2025 | $100 million | $2 billion | Felicis |
| Series C | October 2025 | $350 million | $10 billion | Felicis |
| Series D | November 2026 | $750 million | $20 billion | Not disclosed |
How much funding has Mercor raised in total?
Mercor’s disclosed rounds add up to about $1.23 billion. That figure counts the full Series D, including the employee tender portion.
What Mercor does with its network of 5 million experts
Mercor’s network has more than 5 million domain experts. They get paid to train frontier AI models using knowledge from their own fields.
Frontier labs have been the main buyers so far. Co-founder and co-CEO Brendan Foody posted on X in July that annualized revenue had passed $2 billion in June, SiliconANGLE reported.
Mercor also uses a lot of AI internally. In a blog post on the round, Foody wrote that the company spends three times as much on inference as on employee salaries.
Why the Mercor funding targets enterprise AI evaluation
Mercor’s pitch to enterprises rests on one problem. A model can score well on a public benchmark and still fail inside a specific company.
Co-CEO Adarsh Hiremath said those failures come from a company’s own systems, policies and edge cases. Mercor builds a custom benchmark for each enterprise customer. Post-training then starts from those results.
Foody’s post says the United States has more than 800 distinct occupations. Each has workflows that models have not yet been tested against.
The Deeptune deal and new offices
Mercor bought New York startup Deeptune in July 2026. The Deeptune team had spent two years rebuilding hundreds of enterprise applications where AI agents can practice work tasks.
Part of the new money will fund more of these practice environments. Mercor also opened offices in New York and London this year.
Jai Das, president and co-founder of Sapphire Ventures, expects enterprise demand to grow as open models improve. He said frontier labs have bought most expert training data up to now.
Mercor funding among this month’s AI deals
Mercor’s round landed in a busy month for AI capital. OpenAI closed an $11 billion first tranche at a $1.25 trillion valuation days earlier.
That deal and other early-November rounds are covered in our daily AI funding news for November 7 and 8.
FAQ
How much did Mercor raise in its Series D?
Mercor raised $750 million in a Series D announced on November 10, 2026. The round values the company at $20 billion and includes a tender offer for employee shares.
Who invested in Mercor’s Series D round?
Investors include Benchmark, Felicis, General Catalyst, Nvidia, Salesforce, Zoom, Sapphire Ventures, StepStone Group, XTX Ventures, G Squared, Glade Brook Capital, Fundomo and Apollo-affiliated funds. Mercor did not name a lead.
What is Mercor’s valuation in 2026?
Mercor is valued at $20 billion after its November 2026 Series D. That is double the $10 billion valuation from its October 2025 Series C.
What does Mercor do?
Mercor runs a network of more than 5 million domain experts who train and evaluate AI models. It works with frontier labs and now sells custom evaluations and post-training to enterprises.
How much total funding has Mercor raised?
Mercor’s disclosed rounds total about $1.23 billion, from a $3.6 million seed to the $750 million Series D. Part of the Series D went to an employee tender offer.
