Who are Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha: Indian-origin friends who are the world's youngest self-made billionaires

When you pack a bag and leave home to move across oceans in a new country, your eyes are filled with the dreams of making every wish a reality. For most, this means years worth of education and work, but for some, who have figured out the way of truly making change, an idea is all it takes.

Take this trio of Indian-American high school friends- Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha, 22-year-olds who have become the world's youngest self-made billionaires, replacing Mark Zuckerberg who debuted on the list at the age of 23 in 2008.


Foody, Hiremath and Midha are founders of Mercor, an AI recruiting startup based in San Francisco, that according to a Forbes report recently raised $350 million in funding, valuing the company at $10 billion. Thus, transforming CEO Brendan Foody, CTO Adarsh Hiremath and board chairman Surya Midha into the world's youngest self-made billionaires.

The rise of new wealth

With the rise of technology and accessibility of knowledge, more and more young people with appropriate skills and unique talent have been able to tap into the market and create products and services that have paved their way to success. The three founders of Mercor, join an esteemed group of young tech entrepreneurs whose fortunes recently crossed the billion-dollar mark.

Foody, Hiremath and Midha follow Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, 27 who became a billionaire about 20 days ago after receiving a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the NYSE. Prior to him, Alexander Wang from Scale AI, 28 held the title for 18 months while his cofounder Lucy Guo usurped Taylor Swift to become the world's youngest self-made woman at the age of 30.

Who are Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha?

The trio which includes Hiremath and Midha, two Indian-origin Americans, met at Bellarmine College Preparatory for high school.

Adarsh Hiremath, as per his LinkedIn profile, grew up in the Bay Area and went on to pursue a Concurrent Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science.

Surya Midha, as per his own website was born in Mountain View and raised in San Jose, California by his parents who immigrated from New Delhi to the US. He earned a bachelor's in Foreign Studies at Georgetown University at the same time Hiremath was at Harvard. Brendan Foody was also at Georgetown, studying economics.

Together, Hiremath and Midha became the first team in history to win all three national tournaments in policy debate, with Midha being ranked as the best speaker at two of them.

“During my sophomore year, I co-founded Mercor in my dorm room. Convinced that labor aggregation was the greatest opportunity of the 21st century, I dropped out of Harvard, moved to San Francisco, and was awarded the Thiel Fellowship,” Hiremath wrote on LinkedIn. Both Foody and Midha also dropped out of Georgetown at the same time to focus on Mercor.

What does Mercor do?

Well, as per a Forbes report, it is a platform where applicants are interviewed by an AI avatar and placed with a company looking to hire talent. While the three Thiel fellows started the company to match engineers in India with US companies in need of freelance coders, it has now transformed into a hope for those looking for the right opportunities at the right place.