How a fast-growing AI labor platform is reshaping venture dynamics

Over the past year, Mercor has become one of the most closely watched companies in the AI economy—both for its explosive growth and for the way it has pushed even the most traditional venture capital firms to adapt. The company, led by co-founder and CEO Brendan Foody, sits at the intersection of human expertise and frontier AI model development. Its platform connects highly skilled professionals—doctors, lawyers, analysts, engineers—with leading AI labs and enterprises to “teach” advanced models through real-world judgment and domain-specific knowledge.

Mercor’s model reflects a fundamental shift in AI work: instead of humans repeatedly performing routine tasks, experts now codify workflows, evaluations, and reasoning patterns that help AI systems learn once and scale infinitely. As AI accelerates, Mercor’s network has grown into a critical part of the emerging “AI labor layer” powering next-generation agents and enterprise automation.

Benchmark’s renewed push into AI

This transformation has not gone unnoticed. According to several industry sources, Benchmark, one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic venture firms, made an unusually aggressive effort to back Mercor. The firm—which historically insists on ~20% ownership and a board seat—pursued Foody with a level of intensity rarely seen in today’s competitive venture market.

After weeks of discussions, Benchmark ultimately invested for a 10% stake at a $250M valuation, marking a notable shift away from its traditional ownership targets. The deal highlights the new reality: AI startups are raising larger rounds at higher valuations, and even elite firms must adapt.

Benchmark has largely stayed out of the largest foundation model companies, instead focusing on infrastructure and application layers where it has historically thrived. In recent years, the firm has backed companies such as Sierra, Fireworks AI, and Mercor, signaling a deliberate focus on AI workflows, inference infrastructure, and agent-driven enterprise software.

Mercor’s growth and new funding

This momentum culminated in Mercor’s announcement of its $350 million Series C, led by Felicis with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood Ventures. The round values Mercor at $10 billion, a five-fold increase from its Series B.

Mercor plans to use the capital to scale three core pillars:

• Expanding its global expert network across specialized domains
• Improving matching infrastructure between talent and AI training needs
• Accelerating delivery of high-quality evaluations, workflows, and reasoning datasets

The company’s position at the center of AI’s economic engine—where humans train and refine agents to perform increasingly sophisticated work—continues to strengthen with each new advancement in the field.

A new category of work

For millions of professionals, AI is reshaping the nature of skilled labor. Mercor’s platform reflects this shift:

• Doctors are helping models detect early medical signals humans may miss
• Bankers are teaching agents to perform financial analysis more efficiently
• Lawyers are refining model reasoning around precedent and legal judgment

As enterprises move from manual workflows to model-driven ones, the ability to encode human judgment into AI systems becomes an essential, scalable capability. Mercor is building the infrastructure for this emerging category of “expert-trained AI,” enabling people to move up the value chain as models automate more repetitive tasks.

Why this matters for the venture ecosystem

Mercor’s trajectory—and Benchmark’s pursuit—illustrate broader changes:

• AI startups are raising unprecedented amounts of capital
• Traditional ownership-targeting strategies are becoming harder to maintain
• Competition from tech giants and multi-billion-dollar AI funds is intensifying
• The most valuable startups may now emerge from new labor-AI hybrid categories

For Benchmark, adapting its investment model reflects a strategic shift in a market where speed, flexibility, and conviction increasingly determine outcomes.

For Mercor, it underscores the company’s role as a defining force in how human and artificial intelligence interact to create economic value.