Why The World’s Youngest Self Made Billionaires Just Slashed Workers’ Wages

Forbes

The three 22-year-old cofounders of Mercor became billionaires last month. Now workers say they canned an AI project that involved thousands of contractors, then offered to rehire workers at a lower hourly rate.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2025/11/12/the-worlds-youngest-self-made-billionaires-just-slashed-these-workers-wages-by-a-third/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, the world's youngest self-made billionaires just slashed these workers' wages.

00:07Mercore's co-founders last month became billionaires after raising $350 million

00:12on a $10 billion valuation for the AI training startup.

00:17Just over a week later, they allegedly canned an AI project that involved thousands of contractors.

00:23Hours later, it offered to rehire the workers on a lower hourly rate,

00:28according to several people impacted.

00:31Contractors who worked with startup Mercore say they found themselves locked out of Slack last week

00:36after the AI training project they worked on was abruptly scrapped.

00:40The San Francisco startup, which was valued at $10 billion last month,

00:45allegedly emailed contractors last Wednesday to inform them that the project codenamed Musen had been cancelled.

00:52Forbes spoke with five Mercore contractors who worked on the project,

00:56which was focused on reviewing video and audio from Meta's Facebook and Instagram short video platform, Reels.

01:03The contractors were part of a Slack group that shared updates on the project

01:07that at one point included over 5,000 people, according to these contractors.

01:12Contractors told Forbes that they had been working on the project for several months,

01:16and Mercore managers had told them in October that the project was expected to run until at least December.

01:22Mercore did not officially identify the client behind the project,

01:26but workers were told it was Meta and described exclusively working with content from Meta's social media apps

01:31to train AIs to identify people and products in short-form videos.

01:37All of the contractors interviewed requested not to be named or identified.

01:42One told Forbes,

01:43Mercore had been paying workers on the project $21 per hour,

01:54but contractors complained that in the last few weeks the project had at times been paused

01:58and promised hours were cut back.

02:01Another contractor said,

02:03After the Slack group was shut down and former contractors took to Reddit to regroup

02:15and work out what happened,

02:17Mercore emailed them around 1 p.m. Eastern time that day,

02:20writing,

02:20The email also included an offer from some workers to take on new roles on a project dubbed Nova.

02:41Mercore promised,

02:42In the Mercore email to its contractors that was seen by Forbes,

03:03the company said,

03:05Another former Mercore contractor told Forbes,

03:18After the story was first published by Forbes,

03:36CEO Brendan Foody said that the company told contractors the project was,

03:39quote,

03:44Mercore's move to slash wages for some of its contractors

03:47comes just weeks after a new $350 million funding round

03:51boosted the company's valuation to $10 billion,

03:54up from $2 billion just months earlier,

03:57and crowned its three 22-year-old co-founders

04:00as the world's youngest self-made billionaires.

04:03For full coverage, check out Ian Martin's piece on Forbes.com.

04:09This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

04:11Thanks for tuning in.

04:17Thanks for tuning in.

04:27Let's go.

04:28Hi,

04:38What's in the?

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended