Mercor AI Research Fund Grants: Economics of AI
San Francisco · Mexico | Mexico City · New York City · London · Temporary · Onsite · Posted Oct 19, 2026
At a glance
- Employment
- Temporary
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- San Francisco · Mexico | Mexico City · New York City · London
About Mercor
- Mercor's mission is to organize human intelligence to power the AI economy. We're a leading AI data company, building the layer between human expertise and frontier models. Millions of domain experts on the platform are paid over $4 million per day to train frontier AI models. Mercor's APEX benchmark family measures AI's real-world impact on professional work. Mercor Enterprise brings this same infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies: helping companies capture how their best people actually work, translating that expertise directly back into agents.
- Mercor is creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You’ll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society. Mercor is a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.
- MERCOR AI RESEARCH FUND GRANTS: ECONOMICS OF AI
- One of the biggest challenges facing the industry today is determining whether frontier AI is capable enough to deliver value in real-world settings. A model can perform well on benchmarks and still struggle in production. That’s why investing in research, realistic evaluations, and robust verification is critical.
- Mercor is seeking to fund AI research on the economic impacts of AI. This is separate from the Mercor Research Fellowship, which funds individual experts (apply HERE https://www.mercor.com/careers/a0a98be0-d856-4129-b500-c0a3e412ef01/), our $5m of safety funding awards (apply HERE https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/mercor/1d59ce50-4207-4d95-b7fd-5a01e90b0897), and our funding of benchmarking research.
- The grant supports:
About the role
- Mercor is seeking to fund AI research on the economic impacts of AI through its AI Research Fund Grants.
- The program supports projects across three budget tiers focusing on measuring AI's impact on labor, human-AI collaboration and productivity, and enterprise adoption and returns.
Responsibilities
- Submit a brief Expression of Interest (EOI) including a research question and background, project proposal, novelty, risks, team details, proposed outcomes and timeline, and budget overview
- Publish a paper, an open dataset, a public methodology, or a tool released under an open license that permits commercial use
- Participate in periodic progress reports and comply with tax documentation and sanctions screening
Requirements
- Applicants must be researchers at universities, non-profit research organizations, public benefit corporations, or small startups (<20 people) that do not sell AI training data
- Applicants must be based in the United States or the United Kingdom
