AI Hustle: Make Money from AI and ChatGPT, Midjourney, NVIDIA, Anthropic, OpenAI Mercor Raises $350M, Hits $10B Valuation
Nov 2, 2025
Mercor just secured $350 million, skyrocketing to a $10 billion valuation! They pivoted from a hiring platform to providing specialized data annotation services, connecting AI labs with domain experts. The challenges of obtaining confidential medical and legal data highlight the importance of expertise. Plus, there are untapped opportunities for side hustlers in data labeling. However, Mercor faces risks with revenue concentration from a few clients, revealing lessons learned from Scale AI's journey. A fascinating dive into the evolving AI landscape!
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Specialized Data Bridges AI And Domain Experts
- Mercor connects AI labs with domain experts to create rare, high-value training data for fields like medicine, law, and science.
- This specialized data enables foundational models to learn regulated or hard-to-find knowledge not available publicly.
Successful Pivot From Hiring To Data Labeling
- Mercor originally launched as an AI-driven hiring platform but pivoted after discovering its onboarded experts could annotate data for AI training.
- The pivot unlocked product-market fit and led to massive fundraising and valuation growth.
Hidden Data Is The Next Growth Frontier
- Public datasets are nearing saturation, but vast amounts of hidden, regulated, or proprietary data remain untapped for model improvement.
- Mining and creating these domain-specific datasets can materially advance model capabilities.