Mercor connects AI labs with professionals who reproduce workflows from investment banks, consultancies, and law firms. At TechCrunch Disrupt, CEO Brendan Foody said OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta use the marketplace because companies often resist supplying data that could automate their work. Mercor hires former employees and some people still holding industry jobs to complete forms and write reports for model training. Foody said experts can earn up to $200 an hour, the platform has tens of thousands of contractors, and it pays them over $1.5 million daily. He said contractors are instructed against uploading workplace documents.

This arrangement turns professional judgment into commissioned examples. A bank can protect its files while a former analyst reconstructs the choices that give them value. The boundary between personal expertise and employer property is difficult to police when a prompt requests authentic forms, reports, or production code. Foody acknowledged violations may occur at Mercor's scale, while arguing that knowledge in an employee's head belongs to the worker. Skilled contractors receive unusually high gig rates, yet their answers can train systems aimed at the same occupations. Every task carries two prices, the hourly fee paid to the expert and the future value transferred to the lab. A credible contract needs provenance, required employer permission, and conflict disclosures attached to every submitted report or codebase.