Mercor

• 1 Oct 2026research Human-baselines study: frontier AI outperforms junior CPAs on accounting tasks

  Twelve licensed CPAs, with 5.5 years of experience on average, completed four month-end close scenarios and averaged 37%. Claude Opus 5 scored 100% on all 20 attempts, each in under 10 minutes. Cost was $0.21 per criterion met for the model versus $10.35 for the humans. The authors caution that the tasks cover only some accounting skills and exclude client communication and contextual judgment.

  Why it matters: Adds human baselines to Mercor's benchmarks, which helps interpret their scores.

• 30 Sep 2026research Engineering post: 'How we 20x LLM eval throughput'

  Mercor redesigned its eval compute scheduling with a dynamic scheduler using job queuing and admission control. It reports a 20x throughput gain, addressing bottlenecks from global capacity partitioning and underused providers.

  Why it matters: A signal of eval-infrastructure maturity. The 20x figure is self-reported.

• 8 Sep 2026benchmark APEX-Agents 1.1 released

  Version 1.1 adds three expert audits per task, a new judge model (DeepSeek-v4-Flash-0731) that penalizes 'scattergunning' (hedged multi-answer outputs), and MCP tool reliability fixes. Claude Fable 5.1 led at launch with 68.6% Pass@1. The dataset is mercor/apex-agents-v1.1 on Hugging Face.

  Why it matters: Fixes a form of score inflation. Anyone citing APEX-Agents results should say which version they used.

• 1 Sep 2026open-source Open RL training recipe: Qwen 397B trained on APEX-Agents tasks with SkyRL and Harbor

  Mercor RL-trained Qwen3.5-397B-A17B and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B using SkyRL for training orchestration, Harbor for environment management, Docker and MCP. The 397B model's Pass@1 rose from 16.11% to 27.29%. Code, weights and traces are released at github.com/Mercor-Intelligence/ApexAgents-SkyRL-Recipe and in the Hugging Face collection mercor/apexagents-skyrl-recipe. The authors write that 'algorithm choices mattered less than the data'.

  Why it matters: Public evidence that Mercor's environments are used for RL training, not only evaluation. It also documents a compatible stack (Harbor, Docker, MCP).

• 11 Aug 2026research SWE-Marathon-Ext: can AI build a whole SaaS product?

  Twelve product-clone tasks, including Calendly, Figma, HubSpot, Linear, Notion, Rippling, Shopify, Tableau, Zapier, Zendesk and Google Docs. Pass rates across 8 models ran from 74% (GPT-5.6 Sol) to 27% (GLM-5.2). Seven of the eight models scored lower on computer-use (UI) tests than on deterministic backend tests, by 7.6 points on average.

  Why it matters: A long-horizon coding evaluation for SWE-agent environment buyers. The UI-versus-backend gap shows features can be implemented in code yet unreachable through the interface.

• 31 Jul 2026benchmark APEX-Accounting benchmark launched in partnership with Ramp

  An agent benchmark for month-end close and bookkeeping across 10 simulated companies. A sample dataset is on Hugging Face (mercor/apex-accounting-harbor), the Archipelago eval harness is on GitHub, and the technical report is arXiv 2607.27189. At launch the top model (Claude Fable 5) scored 56.4%, and 58% of tasks were never fully solved by any model on any run.

  Why it matters: Adds accounting to the APEX family, and the evaluation stack is open.

• 22 Jul 2026other Reported H1 2026 revenue ~$614M, ~91% from foundation-model companies

  A secondary outlet summarizing financial documents reported by The Information. It gives H1 2026 revenue of about $614M (up ~70% YoY), about 91% from AI foundation-model companies, and gross margin of 27% in 2025 rising to 33% in Q2 2026. Roughly two-thirds of revenue goes to contractors.

  Why it matters: Heavy concentration in frontier labs and thin margins matter for vendor-risk assessment. This is low-tier sourcing: an aggregator relaying The Information, which is paywalled and could not be opened.

• 9 Jul 2026acquisition Mercor to acquire Deeptune, an a16z-backed builder of RL 'training gyms'

  Deeptune is a NYC company led by CEO Tim Lupo. It raised a $43M Series A led by a16z in March 2026, and Foody invested in that round personally. Deeptune has recreated hundreds of enterprise applications, from spreadsheets to Salesforce, as simulated environments for agent RL. Mercor was already a Deeptune customer. The team joins Mercor's NYC expansion, and terms were not disclosed (per SiliconANGLE).

  Why it matters: Mercor adds an environment and simulation software layer to its expert task-and-verifier network, so it can sell environments and tasks together. This is its second RL-environment acquisition of 2026, after Sepal AI in February.

• 9 Jul 2026funding Mercor reported in early talks to raise at ~$20B valuation

  SiliconANGLE reported that Mercor was in early talks to raise at about a $20B valuation, double the $10B of its October 2025 Series C. Forbes (2026-07-09) also covered a fundraise, but the page returned 403, so the round size (the draft's ~$500M) and the investors could not be verified. No closing had been announced as of 2026-10-05.

  Why it matters: A scale and momentum signal. Treat it as reported talks: $10B is still the last confirmed valuation.

• 9 Jul 2026customer Mercor says it reached $2B ARR in June 2026; 'every frontier lab has expanded' since the breach

  Foody told Fortune the business went from a $1B revenue run rate to $2B ARR in the previous four months. Fortune names Anthropic and OpenAI as customers. Foody said all of the Mag Seven except Tesla are customers and that 'every frontier lab has expanded their relationship with us since the data breach'.

  Why it matters: Suggests frontier-lab demand recovered after the breach. All figures and customer claims come from the company (Foody), not audited numbers.

• 25 Jun 2026hire Mercor hires Kevin Shiau (ex-Tesla) as CFO

  Kevin Shiau joined as Chief Financial Officer. He previously held finance and operations roles at Tesla, where he says he helped build the battery-storage business, and earlier worked at First Solar, Citigroup investment banking and an early-stage AI robotics company.

  Why it matters: A CFO hire from a large public company is a typical sign of preparing for later-stage financing and financial controls.

• 25 Jun 2026legal Mercor publishes 'Update on Mercor security incident'

  The blog index lists a Company post titled 'Update on Mercor security incident' dated 2026-06-25. The post body could not be retrieved (the link returned 404 on 2026-10-05), so its contents are not summarized here.

  Why it matters: Buyers doing security due diligence should ask Mercor directly for this incident update and its remediation findings.

• 9 Apr 2026legal Breach fallout: Meta reportedly pauses Mercor contracts indefinitely; contractor lawsuits filed

  After Mercor disclosed on March 31 that it was hit through the LiteLLM supply-chain compromise, a hacker group claimed it had taken 4TB of data, including candidate profiles, PII, employer data, source code and API keys. Wired sources said Meta paused its contracts indefinitely. OpenAI told Wired it was investigating its exposure but had not paused or ended its contracts. Business Insider reported that five contractors had sued, and one suit reviewed by TechCrunch also names LiteLLM and Delve.

  Why it matters: A material security and vendor-risk signal. Meta's current status as a customer is unconfirmed: Wikipedia calls the pause 'temporary' but gives no date for any resumption.

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1. www.mercor.com/blog/ · 2026-10-05, Blog index: CFO post and security update (Jun 25), Deeptune (Jul 9), APEX-Accounting (Jul 31), SWE-Marathon-Ext (Aug 11), SkyRL guide (Sep 1), APEX-Agents 1.1 (Sep 8), eval throughput (Sep 30), human baselines (Oct 1)
2. www.mercor.com/blog/mercor-to-acquire-deeptune/ · 2026-10-05, Official Deeptune announcement by Brendan Foody; 5M+ experts claim; NYC expansion; source of Foody headshot
3. siliconangle.com/2026/07/09/mercor-buys-deeptune-build-training-environm · 2026-10-05, Deeptune CEO Tim Lupo; $43M a16z Series A (Mar 2026); terms undisclosed; early talks at ~$20B valuation
4. fortune.com/2026/07/09/ai-unicorn-mercor-acquires-deeptune-brendan-foody · 2026-10-05, $2B ARR in June 2026; Anthropic and OpenAI as customers; Mag Seven claim; Foody quotes
5. www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2026/07/09/mercor-fundraise/ · 2026-10-05, Returned 403; contents not verified (the draft's ~$500M round size is unconfirmed)
6. www.pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2026/nvidia-weighs-investment-in- · 2026-10-05, Aug 19 2026: Nvidia discussed joining the round at $20B; Mercor supplies Nemotron data; round size undisclosed
7. www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidia-discusses-funding-ai-data-supplie · 2026-10-05, Paywalled original; headline only
8. finance.biggo.com/news/865c23cb-3e0d-4c21-aa0d-6bf2a7fc8d1a · 2026-10-05, Secondary aggregator summarizing The Information: H1 2026 revenue ~$614M, ~91% from foundation-model companies, margins
9. techcrunch.com/2026/04/09/after-data-breach-10b-valued-startup-mercor-is · 2026-10-05, Breach fallout: Meta pause (via Wired), OpenAI investigating, five contractor lawsuits
10. www.mercor.com/blog/why-i-joined-mercor-kevin-shiau/ · 2026-10-05, Kevin Shiau joins as CFO (2026-06-25); source of his headshot
11. www.mercor.com/research/ · 2026-10-05, APEX papers and datasets; current top scores; 'top 5 AI labs and 6 of the Mag 7' self-claim; ACE not listed
12. www.mercor.com/apex/ · 2026-10-05, APEX hub: APEX-Agents, APEX-Accounting (Ramp), APEX-SWE (Cognition), APEX-1; partner benchmarks FrontierCode and Harvey LAB; extended benchmarks
13. mercor.com/apex/apex-accounting-leaderboard/ · 2026-10-05, Leaderboard top Opus 5.5 Max 61.8%; arXiv 2607.27189; HF mercor/apex-accounting-harbor
14. mercor.com/apex/apex-agents-leaderboard/ · 2026-10-05, Leaderboard top Gemini 4 Argon 82.2% ± 4.4%; references v1.1
15. www.mercor.com/apex/apex-swe-leaderboard/ · 2026-10-05, Top Opus 5.5 Max 67.6% ± 5.9%; built with Cognition
16. mercor.com/apex/apex-v1-leaderboard/ · 2026-10-05, Top Gemini 4 Argon 75.7% ± 2.3%
17. www.mercor.com/blog/introducing-the-ai-productivity-index-for-accounting · 2026-10-05, APEX-Accounting launch with Ramp; launch scores; Archipelago
18. www.mercor.com/blog/training-frontier-knowledge-work-agents-a-397b-rl-tr · 2026-10-05, SkyRL, Harbor, Docker and MCP RL recipe; Pass@1 16.11% to 27.29%; released assets
19. www.mercor.com/blog/introducing-apex-agents-1-1/ · 2026-10-05, APEX-Agents 1.1 changes; Claude Fable 5.1 leads at 68.6% Pass@1
20. www.mercor.com/blog/swe-marathon-ext-can-ai-build-a-whole-saas-product/ · 2026-10-05, SWE-Marathon-Ext: 12 clones, 8 models, 74% to 27%
21. www.mercor.com/blog/how-we-20x-llm-eval-throughput/ · 2026-10-05, Eval scheduler redesign; 20x throughput (self-reported)
22. www.mercor.com/blog/human-baselines-for-benchmarks-ai-now-outperforms-ju · 2026-10-05, 12 CPAs averaged 37%; Claude Opus 5 scored 100%; $0.21 vs $10.35 per criterion
23. github.com/Mercor-Intelligence · 2026-10-05, Archipelago (Apache-2.0), apex-swe (MIT), apex-evals (CC-BY-4.0), ApexAgents-SkyRL-Recipe; Harbor and aira-dojo forks
24. www.mercor.com/careers/ · 2026-10-05, 107 open roles with department breakdown; offices SF, NYC, London, Mexico City; TIME100 AI 2026 mention for Foody
25. www.mercor.com/ · 2026-10-05, Homepage: 30k+ experts, $108/hr average, $4M+ daily payouts; Ramp and Cognition benchmark partnerships; product navigation
26. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercor · 2026-10-05, Founder roles (Midha board chairman); Sundeep Jain hired May 2025; Meta 'temporary pause'; Deeptune acquisition
27. research.contrary.com/company/mercor · 2026-10-05, Founder education (Georgetown, Harvard); Sundeep Jain ex-Uber CPO/SVP Eng and ex-Google VP PM
28. trust.mercor.com/ · 2026-10-05, Trust center; no certifications readable from the public page
29. techcrunch.com/2025/10/27/mercor-quintuples-valuation-to-10b-with-350m-s · 2026-06-07, Series C $350M, $10B valuation, ~$500M ARR target, investors, 30k experts, $1.5M/day
30. www.orrick.com/en/News/2026/02/Mercor-Acquires-Sepal-AI · 2026-06-07, Mercor acquired Sepal AI Feb 6 2026; Sepal specializes in training data, eval benchmarks, RL environments for frontier LLMs
31. theaiinsider.tech/2025/10/29/mercor-raises-350m-to-scale-expert-driven-a · 2026-06-07, Customers OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta; 30k experts at avg $85/hr
32. tracxn.com/d/companies/mercor/__764DkS7wJgmA1B8PuOw3_4HUbgJcaKjh8xY9UxvB · 2026-06-07, Total ~$492M over 4 rounds; Seed (General Catalyst), Series A $30M (Benchmark, $250M val), Series B $100M ($2B val), Series C $350M
33. techcrunch.com/2026/03/31/mercor-says-it-was-hit-by-cyberattack-tied-to- · 2026-06-07, March 2026 supply-chain breach via LiteLLM compromise
34. newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/rl-environments-and-rl-for-science · 2026-06-07, SemiAnalysis: incumbents (Scale, Mercor, Turing, Surge) leveraging contractor networks to move into environment/task creation