San Francisco · AI Agent · Andreessen Horowitz · New York · Fortune Technology
AI unicorn Mercor picks up Deeptune after founder Brendan Foody backed the firm
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Brendan Foody started Mercor when he was 19 years old.
Key facts
- Foody described the jump as “the fastest growth trajectory ever” from $1 million to $2 billion ARR in 24 months
- On Thursday, his $10 billion business acquired startup Deeptune, a company Foody quietly helped fund months before buying it, Fortune learned exclusively
- Foody was listed as an angel investor in Deeptune’s $43 million Series A three months before the acquisition closed
- Brendan Foody started Mercor when he was 19 years old
Summary
Deeptune, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup, builds simulation environments where AI agents practice real-world tasks before touching production systems—think a flight simulator, but for AI agents learning how to use Excel, Salesforce, and Slack. Foody was listed as an angel investor in Deeptune’s $43 million Series A three months before the acquisition closed. The deal is also a direct answer to where the AI training market is heading. Frontier labs (and Mercor customers) like Anthropic and OpenAI now need full digital replicas of enterprise software environments where their agents can practice, fail, and learn. Foody claims Mercor is already the market leader in building these so-called reinforcement learning environments—and that all of the Mag Seven except Tesla are customers.