Mercor Research Fellowship 2026 – YOA

Deadline: September 26, 2026

Applications are open for the Mercor Research Fellowship 2026. The Mercor Research Fellowship funds individuals to construct the following technology of benchmarks, analysis methods, and financial analyses of AI. You can pitch a benchmark or eval methodology you wish to construct — a brand new area, a tougher job format, a greater option to measure agentic reliability — and if chosen, you get the time, compute, knowledgeable labor, and mentorship to design, implement, and launch it finish to finish. Or, on the economics aspect, you possibly can pitch a study utilizing Mercor’s proprietary information to higher perceive a facet of AI’s impression on the financial system and companies.

You’ll work immediately with the APEX analysis workforce, get entry to actual enterprise analysis issues from Mercor’s Fortune 500 and frontier-lab companions, and see your work form how the business measures AI functionality.

Focus Areas

• Long-horizon, multi-app agentic duties in skilled companies (legislation, finance, consulting) — extending APEX-Agents
• Real-world software program engineering analysis past situation decision — extending APEX-SWE
• Professional accounting and finance workflows — extending APEX-Accounting
• AI-for-Science evals: analysis-degree arithmetic, biology, supplies science, and theoretical physics
• New financial benchmarks — negotiation, administration, and different capabilities that carry financial worth however resist customary job codecs
• Novel analysis methodology: contamination resistance, rubric design, human-vs-mannequin grading settlement, price-adjusted scoring
• The economics of human information platforms like Mercor – pricing, matching, elasticity of provide and demand.
• AI Theory of the Firm: what an AI-native agency appears to be like like from the within, and the way work is definitely organized inside one, with a give attention to empirical work.
• Strong pitches exterior this record are welcome — we fund the perfect concepts, not the closest match to a template.

Benefits

• 3-month stipend of $40,000 or 6-month stipend of $80,000
• Unlimited API credit, plus a devoted price range for GPU compute and paid knowledgeable/human-information time
• Weekly 1:1 mentorship with a member of the APEX analysis workforce, plus common entry to the broader analysis org
• Access to Mercor’s market and knowledgeable-community information for empirical work, topic to evaluation
• Access to frontier mannequin APIs, Mercor’s inside analysis infrastructure, and — the place acceptable — actual enterprise analysis issues from Mercor’s clients
• Optional desk in Mercor’s San Francisco workplace for fellows who wish to be in individual
• Introductions to Mercor’s community of researchers throughout frontier labs and academia
• Standout fellows are thought of for a full-time provide on the APEX analysis workforce on the finish of the fellowship

Eligibility

• They seek genuine interest in evaluation as a research discipline — not just a stepping stone to a model-building role.
• Background in economics, CS, ML, statistics, or an adjacent field (measurement, psychometrics, HCI, social science)
• A specific, well-scoped idea for a benchmark, eval technique, or empirical study you want to build — the fellowship is built around your pitch.
• Comfortable in a startup environment: fast iteration, direct access to real customer problems, less hand-holding than an academic lab.
• Able to commit at least 30 hours/week for the duration of the fellowship — during a leave, over a summer, or a flexible stretch of a PhD.
• Bonus: experience with agentic evaluation, RL environments, or domain expertise in law, finance, medicine, or a scientific field.

Application

The application deadline is September 26, 2026 at 7:00 AM GMT+1.

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to Mercor Research Fellowship.