Mercor, a startup with a market valuation of $10 billion, is led by 22-year-old CEO Brendan Foodie, who has the idea to lay off 5,000 of the company's employees.
Mercor, a startup with a market valuation of $10 billion, is led by 22-year-old CEO Brendan Foodie, who has the idea to lay off 5,000 of the company's employees.
Mercor, which helps some of the biggest tech companies train their AI models, has told its contract workers that they will no longer be working on a major project for Meta.
According to an email obtained by Business Insider, employees working on a project codenamed Musen were told on Tuesday that it was being shut down due to “changes in project scope.” Shortly after, the contractors were offered work on a similar new project called Nova, where the pay was $16 per hour, $5 less than the hourly rate for Musen.
At its peak, Musen employed over 5,000 people. The news came as a surprise, as several contractors said they had been told the project would last until the end of the year.
A Mercor representative said the information was "inaccurate" but declined to comment on what specific details had prompted the company's objections.
"We openly state throughout the duration of the offer that this is temporary work related to a specific project," added the Mercor representative.
Three Mercor employees told Business Insider that $16 an hour is particularly low, as some contractors previously earned up to $60 an hour on other Mercor projects. Another employee said that a previous Mercor project was also closed and replaced with a similar one, but at a rate of $10 an hour less.
In a September podcast, Mercor CEO Brendan Foodie said the most important aspect of the business is quality and "having phenomenal people who you treat extremely well."
He added that the average pay rate at Mercor is $95 per hour, while competitors such as Scale and Surge pay around $30.
