Mercor buys AI training startup Deeptune after founder’s angel investment
Mercor acquired Deeptune, adding simulation tools for AI agents months after CEO Brendan Foody joined the startup’s Series A as an angel investor.
By Sofia Marchetti · World Affairs Correspondent
3 min read
Mercor has acquired Deeptune, a startup that builds simulated software environments for training AI agents, Fortune reported Thursday. The deal adds infrastructure Mercor can use as AI labs seek safer ways to test agents before letting them operate in live business systems.
Mercor did not disclose the purchase price, according to Fortune. The company said Deeptune’s team will move to New York as part of the acquisition.
Deeptune, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, creates practice environments where AI agents can learn to perform tasks in workplace tools such as Excel, Salesforce and Slack, Fortune reported. The company had raised a $43 million Series A three months before the acquisition closed, and Mercor founder Brendan Foody was listed as an angel investor in that round.
Foody told Fortune that his angel investment was made with a possible acquisition already in mind. He described the prospect of buying Deeptune as a major reason for writing the check.
The acquisition brings together two pieces of the AI training process, according to Fortune’s account of the companies’ roles. Mercor uses a network of domain experts to create tasks and evaluation rubrics that judge whether a model completed work correctly, while Deeptune provides the software-like environments where those tasks can run.
Fortune reported, citing Sacra, that Mercor’s expert network includes more than five million people. Foody told Fortune that Mercor already leads the market for reinforcement-learning environments and claimed that every company in the “Mag Seven” except Tesla is a customer.
Mercor’s customers include frontier AI labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI, Fortune reported. Those labs are seeking digital replicas of enterprise software systems where AI agents can make mistakes and improve without affecting production systems, according to the report.
Foody founded Mercor at age 19, Fortune reported. He is now 23, and Fortune described him as being worth billions on paper through his stake in the company.
Mercor said in February that it had reached a $10 billion valuation after its Series C funding round, according to the company’s own blog cited by Fortune. The Information reported that Mercor reached $2 billion in annualized recurring revenue in June, up from $1 billion last year.
Foody told Fortune the company grew from a $1 billion revenue run rate to $2 billion in annualized recurring revenue during the four months after a March data breach. He also claimed that every frontier lab expanded its relationship with Mercor after the breach.
The March incident exposed sensitive Mercor data, according to Fortune. Halborn said hackers exploited a supply-chain vulnerability in LiteLLM, an open-source Python library used in AI tool development, and TechCrunch reported that roughly four terabytes of Mercor data were taken.
Fortune reported that the stolen material included contractor Social Security numbers, passport scans, interview recordings, facial biometrics and internal records tied to Anthropic safety-data labeling and Meta reinforcement-learning pipelines. The hacking group Lapsus$ claimed responsibility and offered the data for sale on Telegram, according to Fortune.
A class-action lawsuit was filed against Mercor in California in April over the breach, Fortune reported. Mercor’s Deeptune deal shows the company is still pursuing acquisitions and customer growth while facing fallout from that security incident.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.