$1M-$40M ARR in 1 year: AI Infra driven by Gen-media's exploding

Mercor ARR hit 75M in 2 years with 21-year-old founder

Feb 24, 2025

∙ Paid

4 startups hit a big ARR milestone tracked by The Signal that caught my eye last week, Codeium(Windsurf) hits $40M ARR while some other AI coding tools are also soaring, with Cursor, Bolt.new and Lovable doing a great job in a short time with a tiny team: 0 to $10M ARR in 1 year with 2 people: Small Teams+AI is the Future.

And Mercor, the AI-powered recruitment platform doing an AI Marketplace, now hits ARR at $75M in 2 years with a 21-year-old founder.

Codeium(Windsurf) ARR at $40M

Codeium is an advanced AI-powered coding assistant designed to enhance developer productivity across various programming environments. It functions as a comprehensive code acceleration toolkit, providing features such as code autocomplete, intelligent search, and AI chat capabilities, all integrated seamlessly into popular IDEs and code editors.
In a competitive landscape, Codeium distinguishes itself by primarily targeting enterprise customers rather than individual developers. The company has reported that its free tier is utilized by over 1,000 enterprise clients, including notable names like Anduril, Zillow, and Dell.
Codeium recently introduced the Windsurf Editor, an innovative tool capable of autonomously writing code, a feature that is part of a broader trend towards 'agentic AI' in software development. It is in the process of raising a new funding round at a valuation of approximately $2.85 billion.

Semperis ARR hits $100M

Semperis is a hybrid identity protection platform, with a focus on Active Directory (AD). It provides comprehensive protection on-premises, in the cloud, and in hybrid environments from attacks that use identity as a vector.
With a focus on AD, a component pivotal to most organizations' IT infrastructure, its solutions play a crucial role in mitigating risks associated with identity-based cyber threats.
It took Semperis five years to build a product and go from $0 to $3M ARR, and the next five years to go from $3M to $100M.

Mercor AI ARR hit $75M in 2 years

Mercor is an AI-powered recruitment platform designed to revolutionize the hiring process by sourcing, vetting, and compensating employees for companies. The platform focuses on connecting AI companies with individuals who possess expertise in specialized fields, such as law, medicine, and chemistry.
Mercor utilizes a unique model where candidates undergo AI-led interviews that gauge their skills and compatibility with various roles. This allows the platform to curate a pool of candidates specifically tailored to the needs of companies in the AI sector. Notably, they aim to reduce the time and effort traditionally associated with job searching, reportedly saving candidates hundreds of hours.
They’ve created close to 5,000 jobs, crossed a $75M revenue run rate, averaged 51% MoM growth for the last 6 months, $7 million in revenue this month, and achieved profitability. Now raised $100M Series B at a $2B valuation from Felicis, General Catalyst, Benchmark, DST and MenloVentures.

Synthesia AI ARR at $85M

Synthesia is a leading AI video generation platform that specializes in creating high-quality videos from text in over 140 languages. The platform leverages advanced artificial intelligence technology to produce videos featuring realistic AI avatars that can be customized to reflect brand identity or the preferences of the user.
Synthesia is widely used across various sectors such as Marketing, Training and Development, Customer Service, and Information Security.
It recently secured $180 million in a Series D funding round, significantly boosting its valuation to $2.1 billion. The funding round was led by NEA, bringing its total capital raised to over $330 million since its inception. The company reports serving over 60,000 customers, including more than 60% of Fortune 100 companies, and at ARR ~$85M.

The rapid growth of Synthesia not only signifies a strong market demand for AI-generated video, but also a demand for the underlying infrastructure to provide such developer services.