Big Take
Big Take
Bloomberg and iHeartPodcasts
The $10 Billion Startup Training AI to Do Your Job
20 minutes Posted Apr 29, 2026 at 8:40 pm.
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Show notes

Amid the nervousness about whether AI will replace human workers, one company has been aggressively seeking professionals. The San Francisco startup, Mercor, isn’t hiring experts to perform their jobs; it’s paying them an hourly rate to teach their daily routines to AI agents. 

On today’s Big Take podcast, reporter Tom Foster takes host Sarah Holder into the world of Mercor — why professionals are signing up to train the AI that could take over parts of their jobs and how the company’s founders want to remake white-collar work.

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Hosted by Sarah Holder; Produced by Julia Press; Reported by Tom Foster; Edited by Jeffrey Grocott.

Fact-checking by Eleanor Harrison-Dengate and Rachael Lewis-Krisky; Engineering by Alex Sugiura.

Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin; Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer.

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