Two Indian-American schoolmates among trio who are world’s youngest self-made billionaires

A 22-year-old trio has beaten Mark Zuckerberg’s debut to become the world’s youngest self-made tech billionaires.

The trio who went to Bay Area high school together include Brendan Foody, and Indian-Americans Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha.

According to a Forbes report, their startup, Mercor, based in San Francisco, announced a $350 million funding round led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood Ventures, valuing the company at $10 billion. 

The founders of Mercor have now become the youngest self-made billionaires in the world, surpassing other rising tech entrepreneurs. They replaced Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, 27, who held the title for only 20 days following a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the NYSE. 

Prior to Coplan, Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, 28, had held the distinction for about 18 months. Wang’s cofounder, Lucy Guo, meanwhile, became the youngest self-made woman billionaire at age 30 — overtaking none other than Taylor Swift.

Notably, the trio was younger than Mark Zuckerberg was when he first became a billionaire at 23. 

Two Indian-American founders

Mercor is founded by three youngsters, two being Indian-Americans. Surya Midha and Adarsh Hiremath, who both studied at Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys high school in San Jose, California. They were teammates on the school’s debate team. Together, they made history as the first pair ever to win all three national policy debate tournaments in a single year.

The second-generation immigrant, Midha, discloses on his website, “My parents immigrated to the US from New Delhi, India. I was born in Mountain View and raised in San Jose, California.”

He attended Bellarmine College Preparatory from 2017 to 2021 and spent most of high school thinking about policy debate. 

His partner and I were the first team in history to win all three national tournaments in policy debate: the Tournament of Champions (TOC), the National Debate Coaches Association Tournament (NDCA), and the National Speech and Debate Association Tournament (NSDA).

He was also individually ranked as the best speaker at both the TOC and NDCA.

Another Indian-origin founder, Hiremath, also attended Bellarmine College Preparatory. He told Forbes, “The thing that’s crazy for me is, if I weren’t working at Mercor, I would have just graduated college a couple months ago.” 

Hiremath studied at Bellarmine College Preparatory before enrolling at Harvard University to pursue computer science. After two years at Harvard, he dropped out to concentrate on building Mercor.