Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Tuesday, September 9th. Today on Forbes, AI's next job,

recruiting people to train more AI. Sitting in a conference room at Merckor's office in San Francisco's

South of Market District, CEO Brendan Foodie recalls the day in June that changed everything.

Meta had announced it was buying almost half of data labeling giant scale AI for $14 billion,

and poaching its star CEO Alexander Wang.

Merckor, a smaller rival that recruits PhDs and other experts to train models for AI labs, saw an

immediate opening. Foodie tells Forbes, quote, I was initially surprised. Then it slowly transitioned

from surprise to excitement and enthusiasm around the future. His co-founder and CTO, a Darsh Hiramath, chimes in and says, quote,

It just doesn't happen too often in startups where your biggest competitor gets torpedoed

overnight.

That's because scales tie up with meta means many of the big AI labs worried about a loss

of neutrality no longer want to work with them, the founders argue.

During the conversation, Hiramath struggles to contain the excitement of his new pet,

a six-week-old Bernese mountain dog named Zeus.

The puppy's exuberant energy is an apt metaphor for Mercor itself, a company that has

become one of the AI-era's poster children

for Silicon Valley's 20-something founders.

At age 22, Mercor's leaders, Fudi, Hiramath, and Surya Mehta, are all Teal fellows,

members of conservative billionaire investor Peter Teal's program to dole out $100,000 grants every year to young people

in exchange for foregoing college. The three longtime friends who met on their Bay Area

Suburbs High School debate team started Merckor in 2023 before their fellowships. The buzzy startup,

backed by heavy hitters including Blue Blood Venture Firm Benchmark, Twitter

...