Mercor Advertises Remote AI Training Roles
The company Mercor is hiring for remote AI evaluation and writing positions, paying between $30 and $40 per hour. The roles involve tasks like AI response review and generalist writing to help train AI models for a major AI lab. The positions are advertised as flexible, with no phone work required, making them suitable for side-income opportunities.
- Mercor was founded in 2023 by three college dropouts and Thiel Fellows, Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha. The company was initially focused on connecting freelance programmers with companies but pivoted to providing experts to train AI models. - The San Francisco-based startup has seen rapid growth, reaching a $10 billion valuation after a $350 million Series C funding round in October 2025. Its investors include prominent firms and individuals such as Felicis Ventures, General Catalyst, Peter Thiel, and Jack Dorsey. - The company's clients for AI training data include major industry players like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Meta. Mercor manages a network of over 30,000 contractors with specialized expertise. - While the advertised roles pay $30-$40 per hour for generalist writing, Mercor also hires for highly specialized positions with significantly higher pay, such as Legal Intelligence Analysts ($100-150/hour) and Computer Science Intelligence Analysts ($80-100/hour). - The work is part of a growing "Reinforcement Learning Economy," where human experts provide feedback to improve AI model performance, a process known as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). - Some reports have highlighted the precarious nature of this contract work, with instances of sudden firings and subsequent re-hiring at lower pay rates. Contractors may also be required to install time-tracking software. - The company's founders became the youngest self-made billionaires in 2025, and all three were featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for that year. - Mercor's business model is part of a larger trend of AI companies relying on human expertise to refine their models, creating a new market for specialized, remote, knowledge-based work.
