Mercor pitched AI training as a career on 60 Minutes. Its trainers are disputing their hours.
Mercor's contractors are organizing over hours they say were cut after the fact, and one says he has spoken with attorneys at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, an account no one involved has confirmed. The payout line they are disputing is exactly what a reported $20 billion funding round would price.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Mercor chief Brendan Foody, 23, used Sunday's 60 Minutes to pitch AI training as the career of the future: more than 100,000 freelancers, about 30,000 active weekly, teaching OpenAI's and Anthropic's models judgment at $20 to $200 an hour, a reported average of $95 12. Pressed that "it does not sound like stable work," Foody conceded "the hours are more erratic" and said high performers always have work available 1.
CBS had spoken with more than a dozen Mercor trainers, past and current; some were happy, many more said the gigs "come unpredictably, or not at all" 1. Foody's career of the future is the gig economy with better rates.
Mercor's stated rate card spans $20 to $375 an hour
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Floor rate | $20/hr |
| Reported average | $95/hr |
| Broadcast ceiling | $200/hr |
| Top specialty rate | $375/hr |
The payout line under the $2 billion run-rate
The money behind the pitch is a human-supply cost line. Contractor payouts run $1.5 million to $4 million a day 2, which annualizes to roughly $550 million to $1.46 billion, between about a quarter and three-quarters of the $2 billion annualized revenue the company says it crossed in June 34.
Contractor payouts run a quarter to three-quarters of stated revenue
- Estimate
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Payouts at $1.5 million a day (estimate) | $550M |
| Payouts at $4 million a day (estimate) | $1.46B |
| Stated annualized revenue | $2B |
Mercor raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation last October 24, and Forbes reports talks for $500 million at $20 billion that would leave each founder worth an estimated $4.3 billion 3. On that mechanism, the winners are the founders and $20 billion-round buyers if the payout line holds; the losers are trainers whose shipped hours get docked, if the cuts are systematic.
The disputes sitting inside it
The disputed hours sit in that line. Contractors organizing on a Mercor workers' forum say approved, shipped work had hours cut retroactively through a black-box review; one says he has spoken with attorneys at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, an account no one involved has confirmed 5.
Five contractor suits over the March data breach sit in federal court, and Meta paused its Mercor work after it 6. Contractors interviewed by The Verge, New York Magazine and Wired described stressful conditions, poor management and declining pay 7; the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has logged "hostile" culture allegations, which the company answered by calling bonus-tied performance industry standard 8.
The same broadcast called the absorption story "B.S."
Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, in the same hour, called the idea that displaced workers absorb into AI-training jobs "B.S." 1. The people employed training AI are "small relative to the number of people who will be replaced," he said, and US unemployment could triple within a decade on the current course 19.
His fix, with David Autor and Simon Johnson, is AI built to complement workers and a tax code that rewards hiring them 9. The narrower bet for anyone joining the $20 billion round: that a marketplace can hold a payout line this fat while its sellers organize over the meter 3.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
