Companies / Data vendor
Mercor
Mercor describes itself as "organizing human intelligence to power the AI economy", supplying expert human intelligence for training leading AI models and helping enterprises turn their expertise into production AI. Recorded here: 5 clauses of its contract in its own words, what it sells, in its own words, 6 funding events, 7 revenue figures, 75 public prices and 4 market records.
San Francisco, California, USFounded 2023mercor.comLatest record 17 Oct 2026
How Mercor buys data
Mercor, data page, 11 Oct 2026- What it wants
- Workflow data from Slack, Teams, Gmail, Outlook, Confluence, Salesforce, GitHub, Drive, Notion and 100+ other tools.
- What it publishes about price
- No figures. "Compensation is based on data volume, the tools you connect, and the depth of your data."
- Who it takes
- No size, region or language rule published. It names eight industries it is looking for.
- How the holder is paid
- By wire on delivery of the anonymised dataset, typically within 2 to 4 weeks of the signed agreement.
- Who removes personal data
- Automated extraction and anonymisation, paid for by Mercor. It says no buyer sees raw data.
- What it pays for an introduction
- 5% of the deal, up to $100,000, paid after the company's first delivery (shown in its referral app; the public page names no amount).
We are not Mercor's agent, partner or representative. If you hold data it might buy, we can put it in front of Mercor and every other buyer that fits at the same time.
What Mercor sells
In its own words, read on its own site 15 Oct 2026. On the vendor register
- What it sells
RL environments: “We build reinforcement learning (RL) environments in three steps” mercor.com
Datasets: “Diverse datasets spanning professional, coding, research, agentic, and multimodal tasks.” mercor.com
Expert and human data: “Mercor's talent platform mobilizes deep subject-matter experts across professional and consumer domains to produce specialized data at scale.” mercor.com
Evaluations and benchmarks: “Benchmarks, peer-reviewed research, evaluation leaderboards, datasets, and open tooling for frontier AI systems.” mercor.com
- Where its data comes from
Made by experts and contractors: “Every task is written by PhD researchers, practicing lawyers, and senior engineers, not crowdsourced.” mercor.com
Replicas of real software: “Expert-built tasks run inside high-fidelity enterprise app clones” mercor.com
Generated: “Engineers scripted synthetic logs (500 to 1,000 lines of normal operation mixed with 10-20 lines of bug symptoms)” mercor.com
Licensed from its owners: “We license it, package it, and pay you for it.” mercor.com
- Buys data from owners
In its words: “We license it, package it, and pay you for it.” mercor.com
- Areas its pages name
- Coding, Business work, Finance, Legal, Medical
What Mercor's contract says
The clauses Mercor publishes for the people it buys data from, in its own words, the costliest first. “Our reading” is ours, not Mercor's. These terms change: read the page itself before you sign.
Licence and use
Mercor licenses your data, packages it and pays you for it. It publishes no licence term, exclusivity or sublicensing terms.
“We license it, package it, and pay you for it.”
Our reading: There is nothing to compare until you hold the licence text.
mercor.com, read 11 Oct 2026Who removes personal data
Mercor extracts and anonymises the data with its own automated pipeline, at its own cost.
“The extraction and anonymization process is fully automated. ... Mercor covers all costs associated with data extraction, anonymization, and transfer.”
Our reading: The buyer controls the scrub, and that control has a price: in the Spirit Airlines auction Mercor bid $7.0M against $5.2M if it could de-identify with its own tools.
mercor.com, read 11 Oct 2026Resale
Mercor's own catalogue offers every dataset to labs for licensing.
“Company Data ... Every dataset available to license”
Our reading: Your data can be licensed to several labs for the one payment you receive.
data.mercor.com, read 11 Oct 2026Other
Its intake asks you to confirm you own the materials or may share them without restrictions.
“Do you have the legal right to license this data for commercial use and AI / model training? ... The materials I'm sharing are ones I own or am authorized to share without restrictions.”
Our reading: The rights risk is yours: settle who owns each part before you confirm this.
data.mercor.com, read 11 Oct 2026When you are paid
Paid by wire when the anonymised dataset is delivered to the buyer, typically 2 to 4 weeks after signing.
“Payment is issued via wire transfer upon delivery of the anonymized dataset to the buyer. This typically occurs within 2-4 weeks of the signed agreement, depending on data extraction and processing time.”
Our reading: Among the fastest published payment terms, though tied to Mercor's own processing finishing.
mercor.com, read 11 Oct 2026
Not published: Price figures, Licence term, Exclusivity, Sublicensing. Ask for each in writing.
Public prices involving Mercor
- Mercor's average contracted expert rate (homepage)
Platform-stated average of contracted rates, up $1 from $111/hr on 15 October 2026 ($110 on 14 October, $109 on 11 October). The homepage's own data field reads 112.
The payer's own page, Mercor homepage
$112/hr Average contracted rateper hour (paid to the worker)
- Lawyers (Mercor listing)
Generic lawyer pool listing, US only; the band rose from $70-$110 (read 11 Oct 2026). Paid by Mercor; the lab bill rate is higher. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$100-$120 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Humanities expert work on Mercor (standing talent network; band its listings have posted at)
The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $50 an hour on the posting).
The payer's own page, Mercor, English Language and Literature Expert (closed) and its Humanities Expert talent network
$45 to $60 an hourper hour
- Business operations expert work on Mercor, including briefs and reference answers for simulated work environments (standing talent network band)
The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $60 to $100 an hour on the posting).
The payer's own page, Mercor, Marketing Expert: Brand Marketing (AI Agent Environments) (closed) and its Business Operations Expert talent network
$90 to $120 an hourper hour
- Compute for one post-training run of an open model (GLM 4.7) on Mercor's 1,800-task APEX Agents dataset
Mercor's chief executive on the lift its own task set gave an open model: the corporate-law score went from 4.7% to 26.6% after training on 1,800 tasks. The compute is the lab's training cost, not a price paid for the tasks; the page is undated, so the date is the day it was read.
A vendor's published price guide, Sequoia Capital podcast, Brendan Foody (Mercor): How RL environments are built
about $500K in computeper post-training run on 1,800 tasks
- Legal-environment RL tasks ordered at scale from Mercor (the most common kind of order)
Mercor's chief executive describing a typical order and its scale: some frontier labs might buy 50,000 tasks a month. The page is undated, so the date is the day it was read.
A vendor's published price guide, Sequoia Capital podcast, Brendan Foody (Mercor): How RL environments are built
$2,000 per taskper task
- Cost basis of one expert-written RL task at Mercor (ten hours of expert time at $150 an hour)
The vendor's own cost floor for a task before its margin; the margin then depends on how differentiated the task is. The page is undated, so the date is the day it was read.
A vendor's published price guide, Sequoia Capital podcast, Brendan Foody (Mercor): How RL environments are built
a $1,500 cost basisper task
- RL training tasks sold by Mercor to AI labs, full price range
The vendor's own account of what labs pay it per task; the range depends on how differentiated and frontier the task is. The page is undated, so the date is the day it was read.
A vendor's published price guide, Sequoia Capital podcast, Brendan Foody (Mercor): How RL environments are built
from $50 to $10,000per task
- Medical expert work on Mercor, nurses and other clinical professions (standing talent network band)
The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $55 to $65 an hour for registered nurses on the posting). The band spans professions, so it is wider than any one role's rate.
The payer's own page, Mercor, RN Annotators (closed) and its Medical Expert talent network
$60 to $180 an hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Physician (MD/DO) work on Mercor, clinical documentation and AI evaluation (standing talent network band)
The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $170 an hour on the posting).
The payer's own page, Mercor, Primary Care Physician (MD) (closed) and its Medical Expert (M.D./D.O.) talent network
$115-$150 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Recorded AI-coding-assistant session (an agent trajectory of about 50 turns) contributed to a lab via Mercor
Mercor pays builders to do their own project work in a recorded terminal coding assistant for an AI research organisation. Cut from $500 per accepted session (read 11 October 2026) to $200; the page header now reads "$200 / task". Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor, Builders & Developers: Share Your AI Coding Sessions
$200 per accepted sessionper accepted session (about 50 turns, 2 to 3 hours)
- Mercor: Consulting Expert (role on the homepage)
Hourly rate Mercor shows for a role among its latest roles on its homepage, which rotates; 70 people recently hired. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor
$95/hrper hour (paid to the expert)
- Mercor: Legal Expert (role on the homepage)
Hourly rate Mercor shows for a role among its latest roles on its homepage, which rotates; 65 people recently hired.
The payer's own page, Mercor
$90/hrper hour (paid to the expert)
- BioInformatics Experts at Mercor (writing multi-step bioinformatics data-analysis tasks with validated answers)
Hourly contract, remote. The work is genomics-style data analysis (public archives such as GEO, SRA and PDB, or the expert's own data) with a reproducing Jupyter notebook per task.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, BioInformatics Experts
$90-$110 / hrper hour (paid to the worker)
- Mercor: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Median of the rates Mercor states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $56-$95/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
A catalogue or marketplace listing, AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
$80/hr median; typical $55-$150/hrper hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
- Applied Physics Benchmark Specialist role on Mercor's live board
A benchmark-writing role, priced well below the data science role on the same page. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor
$61-$77/hrper hour (paid to the expert)
- Chemists, explosives and nuclear security specialists writing safety tasks on Mercor
About a dozen hazardous-domain roles (toxicological chemist, blasting engineer, nonproliferation analyst, nuclear engineer) all carried the same per-task band; the generalist role on the same page paid $50 - $60 / hour.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$65 - $75 / taskper task (paid to the expert)
- Share of Mercor's gross revenue paid to contractors
Implies the lab pays about $1.43 to $1.67 for each $1 an expert receives (1 / 0.70 to 1 / 0.60).
Press report, Sacra, Mercor company page
60-70% of top-line revenueshare of gross revenue
- Mercor daily payouts to experts
Up from more than $1.5M a day in October 2025 and more than $2M a day in mid-2026; $4M a day is about $1.46B a year (x365).
The payer's own page, Mercor homepage
$4M+ Daily payoutsper day, all experts
- Data Science Expert role on Mercor's live board
Live listing on Mercor's homepage the day it was read; the same page shows a $109/hr average contracted rate, and listings change daily. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor
$100-$150/hrper hour (paid to the expert)
- Inorganic Chemistry & Synthesis Expert (PhD-level evaluation of materials synthesis problems) at Mercor
A single fixed hourly rate, not a band; hourly contract, remote. Mercor pays the expert; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Inorganic Chemistry & Synthesis Expert
$84 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- A software expert recording and narrating real work on screen (Mercor listing)
What the person is paid, not what the lab pays. Vendors pass roughly 60 to 70% of the lab's price to the person.
The payer's own page, Mercor
Up to $65 an hourper hour, paid to the person
- Oncologist (Mercor listing)
The highest hourly band on Mercor's open board the day it was read. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$350-$450 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- A developer's own AI coding session, shared as data (Mercor)
Pays for existing work sessions, not new labour: the closest a vendor listing comes to buying data a person already has. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$200 per taskper task (paid to the worker)
- One self-contained database engineering task for AI agents (engine implementation, production diagnosis or application migration) with a reproducible repository, reference solution, tests and grading criteria, Mercor Database Systems Evaluation Expert pilot
A pilot for the first three qualifying applicants (applications close 16 Oct 2026, task due 30 Oct 2026), each completing one task; at the stated 25 hours it is about $88 an hour. Highest per-task coding rate on Mercor's board on the day read.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Database Systems Evaluation Expert
$2.2K per taskper task, about 25 hours of work
- Database Systems Evaluation Expert, per task (Mercor)
The highest per-task price on Mercor's board the day read.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$2.2K per taskper task (paid to the worker)
- Lean Engineer, formal mathematics (Lean 4, Mathlib) (Mercor)
Compare Alignerr's Lean 4 listings at $170-200/hr the same day. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$90-$110 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Condensed Matter Physicist (PhD) (Mercor)
Ten physics PhD subfield listings opened on 25 September 2026 all carry $80-$110. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$80-$110 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Software engineering expert pool (writing engineering problems with reference answers, grading model-written code)
Mercor's own summary of what its software-engineering projects have paid; a standing pool, not one project.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Software engineering expert pool
$70 to $150 an hourper hour
- Biotechnology Expert talent network at Mercor (bioprocess and therapeutic judgment for AI model evaluation)
A talent-network post: the band is what past contracts in the field have paid, set per project. The highest advertised life-sciences band found on Mercor this run.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Biotechnology Expert
$110 to $125 an hourper hour (paid to the expert, past contract rates)
- Chemistry Expert talent network at Mercor (graduate-level chemistry judgment for AI model evaluation)
A talent-network post: the band is what past projects have paid, set per project, not a standing offer. Mercor's Biology Expert post uses the same wording at $70 to $105 an hour.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Chemistry Expert
$65 to $105 an hourper hour (paid to the expert, past project rates)
- Audiobook QA Expert, English (US) (Mercor)
French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese audiobook QA list at $15-$20. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$20-$25 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Equity Research Expert, single-name analyst publications (Mercor)
Central bank and company-analysis expert listings carry the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$150-$250 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Application user recording real work in Visual Studio Code on macOS (computer-use data)
One of a family of per-application listings (PyCharm, Android Studio and others at the same rate); the worker supplies the machine and licence.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Application user recording real work in Visual Studio Code on macOS
$55-$65 per hourper hour
- Application user recording generalist software use (Photoshop on Windows) (Mercor)
Mercor's computer-use series: generalist apps $30-$40, STEM apps $45-$55, code tools $55-$65, office professionals $60-$70. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$30-$40 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Molecular Biology Experts, US (Mercor)
A UK variant lists the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$70-$105 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Auditor of repository-level software-engineering benchmark tasks (reference patches, test harnesses) for Mercor
QA labour on verifiable coding tasks, US only; page said posted a month before reading.
The payer's own page, Mercor, SWE-Bench Task Auditor
$70-$90 / hrper hour
- Drug Discovery Scientist at Mercor (building drug R&D evaluation problems for frontier AI models)
Hourly contract, remote. Life-sciences work next to biology: experts write research problems wrapped around messy evidence, plus the data room and the grading document.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Drug Discovery Scientist
$60-$90 / hrper hour (paid to the worker)
- Spanish Tutors (Mercor)
A language role priced near expert rates. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$60-$65 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Codebase-exploration RL task on a production Python repository (Django, Twisted, Scrapy, SymPy, mypy, pip and others), Mercor Codebase Q&A
Same project and rate as the Go, C and TypeScript tracks; listing active when read. Mercor posts the same $130 per approved task for its Go, C, TypeScript tracks (read 2026-10-14), so scarcer systems languages earn no premium; counted once because it is one programme at one rate. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Software Engineer, Python: Codebase Q&A
$130 per approved taskper approved task
- Legacy codebase migration expert designing and grading migration tasks for a frontier AI lab
The top hourly rate on the board for code work; legacy migration (COBOL, old Java and .NET) is also what Turing pays most for as codebases.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Legacy codebase migration expert designing and grading migration tasks for a frontier AI lab
$200 per hourper hour
- News analysts, reporters and journalists evaluating AI-generated news content (4+ years' experience)
What a working journalist is paid by the hour to grade AI news output, against nothing per article when a publisher licenses their archive.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, News analysts, reporters and journalists evaluating AI-generated news content
$70-$110 per hourper hour
- Clinicians (Mercor listing)
Generic clinician pool listing. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$120-$150 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Biochemistry & Life Sciences Domain Expert at Mercor, embedded with a leading AI lab's GenAI team (USA only)
A full-time position (Bay Area, CA) advertised at an hourly rate: reviews life-sciences tasks, writes instruction specs and golden solutions and builds benchmarks. Mercor's Pharmaceutical R&D ($75-$115) and Materials Science ($70-$110) domain-expert posts are the same programme at a different band and are not repeated.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Biochemistry & Life Sciences Domain Expert
$65-$105 / hrper hour (paid to the worker)
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal records, Mercor's later bid conditioned on in-house de-identification
Matched Google's winning $10.0M but was not selected because it required in-house rather than third-party de-identification; Mercor's $7.5M bid on the standard terms became the alternate.
Court record, Chapter11Cases, Spirit Airlines deidentified data sale (summary of Dkt. 1463, 1470, 1556)
$10 millionper archive (conditional auction bid)
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified enterprise data, Mercor's alternate bid under its signed alternate sale agreement
The losing backup bid behind Google's $10M, on the same terms (buyer pays de-identification, no price reduction); it becomes the sale only if Google fails to close. The privacy ombudsman asked to investigate Mercor's early-2026 security incident before it could be treated as a qualified buyer (Dkt. 1684). Source moved from press to the docket.
Court record, In re Spirit Aviation Holdings, No. 25-11897 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.), Dkt. 1463, Exhibit B (Alternate Sale Agreement, Mercor.io)
Seven Million Five Hundred Thousand U.S. Dollars ($7,500,000.00)per company archive (alternate bid)
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal records, Mercor's first-round alternative conditioned on de-identifying with its own tools
Not selected: the debtors ranked the $5.2 million third-party version higher, saying privacy and process factors may be outcome-determinative. The gap prices who controls de-identification.
Court record, Chapter11Cases, Spirit Airlines deidentified data sale (summary of Dkt. 1463, 1470, 1556)
$7 millionper archive (conditional auction bid)
- Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal records, Mercor's first overbid on Google's terms (third-party de-identification)
Made in the same round as Mercor's $7 million alternative that required its own de-identification; the debtors took this lower bid as the round's highest.
Court record, Chapter11Cases, Spirit Airlines deidentified data sale (summary of Dkt. 1463, 1470, 1556)
$5.2 millionper archive (auction overbid)
- A startup's code and communications after its team was hired away (Warmly)
The first offer arrived eight days after the acquisition was agreed. The company declined all four.
Press report, The Information, via FNNews
Four offers, up to $300Kper company
- Agent Engineer, per task (Mercor)
Agentic task building, paid per accepted task.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$100-$500 per taskper task (paid to the worker)
- Investment Banking & M&A finance domain expert (Mercor)
Private Equity and Venture Capital domain experts list at $110-$150 per hour. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$100-$150 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Partner & General Counsel, legal domain expert (Mercor)
Senior Counsel listings pay $85-$120 per hour. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$100-$150 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Member of Technical Staff, Deeptune Environments (Mercor), building RL training environments for labs
Mercor folded Deeptune in as its environments team; the role builds the simulated apps, tool surfaces, tasks and verifiers.
The payer's own page, Mercor on Ashby, Member of Technical Staff, Deeptune Environments
$160K – $500K • Offers Equityper year (salary)
- Voice actor recording a customer-service agent voice for cloning, African American English (Mercor)
Posted about two months before it was read. Rate as the platform states it, carried by AITraining.jobs, which has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
A catalogue or marketplace listing, AITraining.jobs, Voice Actor: CX Agent Voice Cloning (African American) at Mercor
$50–$100/hrper hour (paid to the voice actor)
- Voice actor recording a customer-service agent voice for cloning, Swiss German (Mercor)
Posted about two months before it was read. Rate as the platform states it, carried by AITraining.jobs, which has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
A catalogue or marketplace listing, AITraining.jobs, Voice Actor: CX Agent Voice Cloning (Swiss German) at Mercor
$50–$150/hrper hour (paid to the voice actor)
- AI Safety Expert, English and Norwegian (Mercor)
Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Dutch carry the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$48-$62 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- AI Safety Expert, English and Vietnamese (Mercor)
Same work as the Norwegian listing at about a third of the pay; Indonesian and Malay also list at $17-$25, Thai at $24-$35. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$17-$25 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Mercor's average pay to about 30,000 contractors (H1 2026)
From financial documents reported by The Information; the same report puts H1 2026 gross revenue at $614M with over 90% from foundation model companies.
Press report, Crypto Briefing (citing The Information)
an average rate of $105 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, 2025
Full-year 2025. At 27% kept, a lab paid about $1.37 for each $1 Mercor paid an expert (1 / 0.73).
Press report, BigGo Finance (citing The Information)
27% (2025)share of gross revenue kept after paying experts
- Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, Q2 2026
At 33% kept, about $1.49 billed for each $1 paid to an expert (1 / 0.67); the same report says contractors take roughly two-thirds of revenue.
Press report, BigGo Finance (citing The Information)
33% (Q2 2026)share of gross revenue kept after paying experts
- Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, 2027 target
A company projection, not a result: the vendor plans to widen its spread on the same work.
Press report, BigGo Finance (citing The Information)
46% (2027 target)share of gross revenue kept after paying experts
- Mercor gross revenue in the first half of 2026, and the share of it from AI foundation model companies
Aggregate revenue across all of Mercor's customers, reported from financial documents The Information saw; it shows how concentrated the buying side of expert data is.
Press report, Crypto Briefing, Mercor reports $614M in revenue, 90% from AI model firms
$614 million, more than 90% from AI foundation model companiesgross revenue, first half of 2026 (all customers)
- AI Safety Red Teamer (Mercor)
Hazardous-domain safety roles (chemistry, nuclear, explosives) are paid per task instead, at $65-$75. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$70-$84 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Share of Mercor's topline revenue paid out to its contractors
The mirror of the margin: Mercor keeps 30% to 40% of what a lab pays, so a lab pays roughly 1.4 to 1.7 times the expert's rate.
Press report, Dealroom News, Mercor doubles to $2B gross revenue run rate
60% to 70%share of topline revenue paid out to contractors
- Frontier Code Agents project for an unnamed AI research lab: use AI coding agents to complete and evaluate realistic engineering tasks, review model-generated code for bugs and edge cases (Mercor, Backend Engineer, Coding Agent Experience)
One programme at one rate: the Data Engineer, ML Engineer and DevOps/SRE/Cloud Engineer postings of the same project (all created 2026-06-15) state the same $400 and 2 to 3 hours, and the Software Engineers (Coding Agents Experience) posting of 2026-01-13 states $400 and 1 to 3 hours. All are closed (no longer accepting applications) when read; the figure sits in each posting's own description data, while the visible page now shows Mercor's standing $70 to $150 an hour band. About three times Mercor's $130 codebase Q&A task.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Backend Engineer (Coding Agent Experience)
$400 per accepted taskper accepted task
- Mercor's advertised headline rate (early June 2026)
Third-party tracker of the homepage figure: $99/hr in April 2026, $141/hr early June, relabeled and reset to $80/hr late June, $108-$122/hr since.
Press report, UsagePricing, Mercor pricing blueprint
$141/hr in early June 2026per hour (paid to the worker)
- Writing expert role on Mercor
The writer read the rate off Mercor's own site; one listing, not a field average.
Press report, Moneywise (on Yahoo Finance)
$75 to $150 per hourper hour (paid to the expert)
- Voice actor recording a customer-service agent voice for cloning, US English (Mercor)
Voice-cloning work, where the actor's own voice becomes the product, pays the most of any speaker role found. Rate as the platform states it, carried by AITraining.jobs, which has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
A catalogue or marketplace listing, AITraining.jobs, Voice Actor: CX Agent Voice Cloning (USA) at Mercor
$50–$150/hrper hour (paid to the voice actor)
- Voice Actor for CX agent voice cloning, USA (Mercor)
Most of the 15 voice-cloning listings (accents from Peru to Northern UK) pay $50-$100. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board
$50-$150 per hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Chemist Talent Network at Mercor (open application for future AI-training contracts in chemistry)
Part-time, remote. Mercor's Biologist Talent Network and Physical Scientist Talent Network posts show the same $60-$80 / hr band, so it is one programme rate (filed here, not repeated for biology).
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Chemist Talent Network
$60-$80 / hrper hour (paid to the worker)
- Coding-benchmark task work in React, TypeScript or JavaScript: curate issues, solutions and test suites from real-world repositories for AI labs (Mercor, Frontend Software Engineer), hourly base plus a bonus per approved task
Mercor states an hourly base plus an unstated bonus per approved task of about an hour; the $200 is its own median hourly pay including bonuses. Closed (no longer accepting applications) when read; one-month, 15 to 20 hours a week project.
The payer's own page, Mercor job board, Frontend Software Engineer (React, TypeScript or JavaScript)
$90 per hour plus lucrative bonus per approved task (1 task takes approximately 1 hour to complete); Median average pay inclusive of bonuses is $200/hrper hour (base), and median pay per hour including per-task bonuses
- Generalist data work on Mercor's Meta project Nova, after project Musen ended
Musen paid $5 more ($21 an hour) and had more than 5,000 workers at peak; Mercor called the reporting inaccurate. The low end of Mercor's pay, for a Meta generalist project.
Press report, Business Insider (on AOL)
$16 an hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Mercor's top industry-expert rate (October 2025)
The CEO's statement; he added that labs are willing to pay even more, without a figure.
Press report, TechCrunch
up to $200 an hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Mercor's average pay for experts (October 2025)
Against $105/hr in H1 2026 and a $109/hr homepage average in October 2026: average pay rose about 25% in a year.
Press report, Contrary Research, Mercor memo
$85/hourper hour (paid to the worker)
- Mercor markup on contractor billing (February 2024)
The earliest reported Mercor spread; the memo calls it both a markup and a take rate, and ties it to median BPO gross margins.
Press report, Contrary Research, Mercor memo
approximately 35%markup on contractor pay
What Mercor earns
Revenue, run rates and ARR as each was published. Run rates are often a best month times twelve, and gross figures include what passes through to experts.
- run-rate Jun 2026Measurerun-rateFigure$2B
- H1 2026MeasurerevenueFigure$614M
- run-rate early 2026Measureannualized revenueFigure$1B
- run-rate Sep 2025Measurerun-rateFigure$500M
- run-rate Sep 2025Measurerun-rateFigure$450M
- ARR Mar 2025MeasureARRFigure$100M
- run-rate Feb 2025MeasureARRFigure$75M
Funding and acquisitions
- 9 Jul 2026EventAcquired by MercorAmountPrice not disclosed. Deeptune builds reinforcement-learning environments; Mercor's post says Andreessen Horowitz led Deeptune's $43 million Series A.
- 9 Jul 2026EventvaluationValuation$20B
- 27 Oct 2025EventSeries CAmount$350MValuation$10B
- 9 Sep 2025EventSeries CValuation$10B
- 20 Feb 2025EventSeries BAmount$100MValuation$2B
- 23 Sep 2024EventSeries AAmount$30MValuation$250M
In the brokerage market
Oct 2026, buyer program
amount not published
Target industries: Legal; Healthcare; Finance & Insurance; Professional Services; Manufacturing; Retail & E-commerce; Real Estate; Logistics & Supply Chain. No fees: Mercor covers extraction, anonymization and transfer, with no deductions. Paid by wire on delivery of the anonymized dataset to the buyer, typically within 2 to 4 weeks of the signed agreement. Anonymization fully automated; no lab buyer sees raw data.
Oct 2026, referral terms
referral bonus, amount not stated
Paid when the referred company goes live and starts earning ('you receive your referral bonus').
Aug 2026, transaction
$7.5 million alternate bid; also $5.2M, $7M and $10M offers
Mercor offered $7 million and later $10 million conditioned on using its own de-identification tools instead of a third party; neither was selected. If the Google deal is not consummated, the Debtors may accept the Alternate Bid.
Research Suite by Stretto (chapter11cases.com), docket summary, 13 Sep 2026
Jul 2026, referral terms
Referral bonus, amount not published. An up-to-$100K-per-referral figure that a third-party tracker reported on the page from 29 Jul to 22 Sep 2026 is unverified: Mercor's own page names no amount.
Paid when the referred company becomes a paid partner and goes live (Mercor data page, read 16 Oct 2026). The earlier $100K figure could not be confirmed on any Mercor page or in named press, so it is not held as fact.
Cited in these 7 guides
- Which AI Data Buyers Take Holders Outside the US?
- AI Training Data Companies: Who Does What in 2026
- micro1, Handshake, Turing, Mercor: Data Programs Compared
- How Do AI Companies Get Their Training Data?
- How Much Is Your Company's Data Worth to AI Companies?
- What Are RL Environments? Who Builds, Buys and Prices Them
- How to Sell Your Codebase to AI Companies (and What It's Worth)
Cite this
AIData.Broker, “Mercor in the AI training data market”, reviewed 17 Oct 2026. https://www.aidata.markets/companies/mercor
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 if you credit AIData.Broker and link to this page. Each row names the publication that stated it, and words quoted from a source keep that source's own terms.