Mercor, a company originally focused on AI-powered hiring, has successfully secured $750 million in a Series D funding round. The announcement was made on Tuesday, November 10. The firm intends to allocate these funds toward the development of infrastructure designed to train and test AI agents.
CEO Brendan Foody stated that the company has spent the last two years building systems to evaluate frontier models using human intelligence. Mercor now plans to provide these capabilities to enterprises, enabling them to measure the performance, costs, and potential improvements of their AI agents.
The company reports a significant shift in its own operational spending, noting that its expenditure on inference is currently three times higher than its spending on employee salaries. Foody emphasized that as AI models become more capable, the demand for specialized human expertise to guide them will continue to grow.
Research from the Agentic Edge Index highlights broader trends in the AI sector. While 64% of AI leaders report positive returns, 66% anticipate that full returns will take at least three years. Additionally, 84% of executives expect business growth without a corresponding increase in staff over the next three years.
