As Amazon lets Mechanical Turk fade, Mercor hits a $2B gross run rate

7 hours ago

Mercor's gross annualized revenue surpassed $2 billion in June 2026, doubling its earlier pace, as reported by The Information.
The company has shifted from an AI recruiting platform to a marketplace for expert-generated training data, serving AI labs and enterprises that need credentialed human judgment for model training and evaluation.
Mercor's revenue model includes pass-through labor costs, with 60-70% of gross revenue paid to contractors, resulting in estimated net revenue of $600-$800 million at the June run rate.
The founder's bet positions expert labor as AI infrastructure, differentiating it from older models like Amazon's Mechanical Turk by focusing on specialized, high-value tasks.
Mercor raised a $350 million Series C in October 2025 at a $10 billion valuation, following rapid growth from a $1 million to a $500 million run rate in 17 months.
Competition includes rivals like Handshake, which also reached over $1 billion in gross revenue, highlighting a market where revenue numbers are large due to concentrated, well-funded customers.
Mercor is expanding beyond labor brokerage with products like APEX (AI Productivity Index) and Mercor Enterprise AI, aiming to create stickier data infrastructure and durable revenue streams.
Risks include supply-chain cyberattacks, as seen in March 2026, and the challenge of retaining revenue as contractors, competitors, and AI labs become more aware of the market's value.

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