Deeptune
Commercial
high confidence
deeptune.com ↗ · Status: acquired (by Mercor, 2026-07-09); operates as the 'Deeptune Environments' team within Mercor
confirmed · Founded ~2025 per official Series A blog ('since we started one year ago', Mar 2026); aggregators (Tracxn, CB Insights) and LinkedIn list 2022, conflict, leaning 2025 per primary source
Deeptune was a New York-based startup building managed reinforcement-learning environments ('training gyms') for computer-use and code, where AI agents practice and are evaluated on realistic digital knowledge-work tasks (simulating tools like Slack and Salesforce). It sold these pre-built environments primarily to frontier AI labs and raised a $43M Series A led by a16z (March 2026). In July 2026 it was acquired by Mercor; the team joined Mercor and Deeptune's environment platform now sits under Mercor. It is therefore no longer ranked as an independent vendor.
Key facts
Headquarters
New York, NY, USA
confirmed citeLast round
Series A, $43M, announced March 19, 2026 (Crunchbase lists round date Feb 23, 2026)
confirmed citeWhat they sell
environments
confirmed citeDeployment
managed-hosted environments ('training gyms'), now sold through Mercor alongside its expert network
reported citeWhat's new
4 sourced updates · last 6 months- 10 Aug 2026hire
Mercor hiring for its 'Deeptune' RL environments team in NYC
Mercor posted Deeptune-specific roles on 2026-08-10, including Member of Technical Staff and Strategic Projects Lead ($120K-$150K base). They describe 'Deeptune Environments' as a Mercor team building RL training platform and tooling for AI labs, and as 'an RL environments lab within Mercor'. The roles are in New York (One World Trade Center).
Why it matters: The Deeptune name and product line continue and are still hiring as a unit inside Mercor.
- 9 Jul 2026acquisition
Mercor acquires Deeptune; team joins Mercor in New York
Mercor announced the acquisition of Deeptune and did not disclose terms. The whole Deeptune team joins Mercor, which is expanding in NYC. Mercor says Deeptune recreated hundreds of enterprise applications as RL environments and that the platform will be combined with Mercor's network of more than five million domain experts.
Why it matters: Deeptune is no longer an independent vendor. Buyers now engage through Mercor.
- 9 Jul 2026acquisition
Fortune: Foody says his angel check into Deeptune was made with acquisition in mind
Mercor CEO Brendan Foody was an angel in Deeptune's $43M Series A three months before the deal and said acquisition was 'in a lot of ways the main motivation, actually.' Terms were not disclosed. Fortune reports Mercor at a $10B valuation with $2B ARR as of June 2026, and names Anthropic and OpenAI as Mercor customers.
Why it matters: Shows the scale of the acquirer and its frontier-lab customers. Anthropic and OpenAI are named as Mercor's customers, not Deeptune's.
- 9 Jul 2026acquisition
SiliconANGLE: Mercor buys Deeptune to build training environments for AI agents
Independent coverage confirming that CEO Tim Lupo and his staff join Mercor in New York and that Deeptune had recreated hundreds of enterprise applications over two years for frontier labs. Foody: 'The constraint has shifted to the environments themselves.' The article also recalls Mercor's March 2026 breach through a compromised LiteLLM library.
Why it matters: Third-party confirmation of the deal and that the founder stayed on.
Founding team
TL
Tim Lupo
Co-founder & CEO (joined Mercor with the team after the July 2026 acquisition)
USC (per LinkedIn). Formerly a founding engineer at Hebbia per the baseline's LinkedIn read; this could not be re-confirmed on the public profile.
LS
Lukas Schmit
Co-founder (reported by the aggregator Tracxn and marked there as a former role; the CTO title is unverified)
unknown
What practitioners should know
For researchers
- Deeptune has published no papers, benchmarks or open-source releases of its own. The only benchmarks mentioned are third-party targets (OSWorld, Terminal-Bench), cited in a16z's investment post.
- Environments simulate enterprise apps (Slack, Salesforce, spreadsheets, code) for RL on computer-use and coding agents. Mercor and SiliconANGLE say hundreds of enterprise applications have been recreated (company claim).
For program managers
- Acquired by Mercor on 2026-07-09, terms undisclosed. Engagement now goes through Mercor, which Fortune reports supplies Anthropic and OpenAI. No source names these labs as Deeptune customers.
- Continues as the 'Deeptune Environments' team inside Mercor in NYC, and was still hiring Deeptune-specific roles as of 2026-08-10.
For data ops
- No public docs, API reference, integration format, or security/SOC 2 page was found for Deeptune. Expect Mercor's security and contracting terms to apply after the acquisition.
- For vendor security review: SiliconANGLE reports that attackers breached Mercor in March 2026 through malware in the open-source LiteLLM library, and that Lapsus$ claimed to hold about 4TB of data, including contractor PII.
Products
Deeptune training gyms (now 'Deeptune Environments' within Mercor) ↗Managed RL environments ('training gyms') that simulate enterprise software such as Slack, Salesforce, spreadsheets and code. Each comes with problems, datasets and infrastructure for training computer-use and coding agents, and integrates in 'a few lines of code' (company claim). Since July 2026 they are offered through Mercor.launched 2025 (estimated; the Series A post says the company started about one year before March 2026)
Scale & velocity
Current headcount
~20-25 (Fortune: 'roughly 20-person'; LinkedIn snippet: 25)
reported citeOpen roles
Standalone Ashby board is empty. Hiring now runs under Mercor (e.g. Member of Technical Staff and Strategic Projects Lead, 'Deeptune', posted 2026-08-10, NYC).
reported citeOther locations
India (remote Member of Technical Staff role posted; a job posting, not a confirmed office)
reported citeDistributed / remote
partial, NYC team described as in-person; some remote roles posted (e.g. India)
reported citeResearch depth
Backgrounds
Team includes engineers/operators from Anthropic, Scale AI, Palantir, Hebbia, Glean, Retool, Modal (per company/press), CEO/co-founder Tim Lupo: ex-Hebbia founding engineer, USC CS & Business, Co-founder/CTO Lukas Schmit (per Crunchbase and press)
reported citePapers / benchmarks
No own papers/benchmarks published; a16z post references third-party benchmarks OSWorld and Terminal-Bench as targets Deeptune environments help improve (cites Opus 4.6 ~72.7% and GPT-5.4 ~75% on OSWorld)
reported citeCapital
Total raised
~$43M (latest/likely only round). NOTE: value reflects the Series A round; lifetime total is uncertain, aggregators conflict (Tracxn/CB Insights $46.1M, PitchBook $42.2M)
reported citeLast round
Series A, $43M, announced March 19, 2026 (Crunchbase lists round date Feb 23, 2026)
confirmed citeInvestors
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z, lead), 776, Abstract Ventures, Inspired Capital, Noam Brown (angel, OpenAI), Brendan Foody (angel, Mercor CEO), Yash Patil (angel, Applied Compute CEO)
confirmed citeSecurity & compliance
Other certifications
unknown
Product
What they sell
environments
confirmed citeDeployment model
managed-hosted environments ('training gyms'), now sold through Mercor alongside its expert network
reported citeMaturity
acquired; product continues inside Mercor
confirmed citeNotable customers
⚑Leading/frontier AI labs (unnamed; company claims '100s of gyms' built for frontier research labs) self-claimed cite Buyer analysis
Best fit: Frontier labs and model teams needing ready-made, managed RL environments for training/evaluating computer-use and coding agents.
How we verified this
2026-10-05 refresh: I opened each source the draft cites. The Mercor blog, Fortune and SiliconANGLE all confirm the 2026-07-09 acquisition, the undisclosed terms, and that the team (SiliconANGLE names CEO Tim Lupo) joined Mercor in New York. Fortune confirms Foody's "main motivation" quote, Mercor's $10B valuation and $2B ARR, and that Anthropic and OpenAI are Mercor's customers, not Deeptune's. Two Mercor postings dated 2026-08-10 confirm the "Deeptune Environments" team inside Mercor. deeptune.com shows a "joining Mercor" notice, and the Ashby board is now empty. The Tim Lupo photo is a valid solo JPEG from Fortune's Series A article. The main correction is Lukas Schmit: no press or primary source names him, Crunchbase returns 403, and Tracxn lists him only as a former co-founder, so the CTO title is not supported. The Futurum note was dropped because it is AI-generated filler. My web-search budget was used up, so I could not run a fresh search for missed items. Spot checks of primary and aggregator pages turned up no new funding, shutdown, or post-acquisition launch in the window, only Tracxn's aggregator headcount of 42 as of 2026-08-31, which I left out as unverified. No papers or benchmarks of Deeptune's own exist.
Sources
- www.mercor.com/blog/mercor-to-acquire-deeptune/ · 2026-10-05, Primary: Mercor acquisition announcement, 2026-07-09. Team joins Mercor in NYC, 5M+ expert network, hundreds of enterprise apps recreated 'over two years'
- fortune.com/2026/07/09/ai-unicorn-mercor-acquires-deeptune-brendan-foody · 2026-10-05, Deal coverage: terms undisclosed, Foody's angel-check motive, Mercor $10B valuation and $2B ARR (June 2026), Anthropic/OpenAI as Mercor customers
- siliconangle.com/2026/07/09/mercor-buys-deeptune-build-training-environm · 2026-10-05, Deal coverage: Tim Lupo joins Mercor, plus context on Mercor's March 2026 LiteLLM breach
- jobs.generalcatalyst.com/companies/mercor/jobs/89404711-member-of-techni · 2026-10-05, Mercor MTS posting (2026-08-10) describing 'Deeptune Environments' as a Mercor team, NYC
- jobs.generalcatalyst.com/companies/mercor/jobs/89404694-strategic-projec · 2026-10-05, Mercor Strategic Projects Lead, Deeptune posting (2026-08-10): 'an RL environments lab within Mercor'
- deeptune.com/ · 2026-10-05, Site still live with a 'Deeptune is joining Mercor' notice; describes training gyms for frontier research labs
- jobs.ashbyhq.com/deeptune · 2026-10-05, Standalone jobs board now has no roles listed
- fortune.com/2026/03/19/andreessen-horowitz-ai-startups-deeptune-series-a · 2026-10-05, Source page for the Tim Lupo photo (caption: 'Courtesy of Deeptune'); names Lupo as cofounder and CEO
- deeptune.com/blog/series-a/ · 2026-10-05, Series A post (2026-03-19); names no founders or customers
- a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-deeptune/ · 2026-10-05, Names Tim Lupo as founder and CEO; no other founders
- www.linkedin.com/in/timlup/ · 2026-10-05, Tim Lupo public profile: Deeptune, USC, New York
- tracxn.com/d/companies/deeptune/__oi3tMd7lIKO3Yo_B0aq6tBQHcjZSfLMnyHdwba · 2026-10-05, Aggregator: Lukas Schmit as 'Co-Founder (Former role)', founded 2022, $46.1M over 2 rounds, 42 employees as of 2026-08-31, acquired by Mercor 2026-07-09
- dealroom.co/news/137987-mercor-buys-a16z-backed-deeptune-months-after-fo · 2026-10-05, Aggregator: $46M total and a $31.5M Series A, which conflicts with the $43M from primary sources (not adopted)
- futurumgroup.com/insights/mercors-acquisition-of-deeptune-a-strategic-mo · 2026-10-05, AI-generated analyst note (2026-08-06), labelled 'not editorially curated'; context only, not used as a news item
- siliconangle.com/2026/03/19/deeptune-raises-43m-accelerate-ai-learning-v · 2026-06-07, Series A coverage; Slack/Salesforce workflow simulation; rollouts and rewards
- www.linkedin.com/company/trydeeptune · 2026-06-07, Public snippet: 11-50 / 25 employees, founded 2022 (conflicts with blog), NYC, Research Services, 'Training gyms for AI agents'
- x.com/a16z/status/2034694854123692462 · 2026-06-07, a16z: leading RL environments for computer-use and code
Last updated 2026-10-05 · Every quantitative field carries a source and a confidence tag. Fields we could not source publicly are marked
unknown, never estimated. See the
methodology.