Mercora popular AI recruiting startup, has confirmed a security incident linked to a supply chain attack involving the LiteLLM open source project.
The artificial intelligence startup told TechCrunch on Tuesday that it was “one of thousands of companies” affected by a recent compromise of its LiteLLM project, which was linked to a hacking group called TeamPCP. Confirmation of the incident comes as ransomware group Lapsus$ claimed to have targeted Mercor and gained access to its data.
It was not immediately clear how the Lapsus$ gang obtained the stolen data from Mercor as part of TeamPCP’s cyber attack.
Founded in 2023, Mercor works with companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic to train AI models, hiring specialized domain experts such as scientists, doctors and lawyers from markets including India. The startup says it facilitates more than $2 million in daily payments and was valued at $10 billion after a $350 million Series C round led by Felicis Ventures in October 2025.
Mercor spokeswoman Heidi Hagberg confirmed to TechCrunch that the company “moved promptly” to contain and remediate the security incident.
“We are conducting a thorough investigation with the support of leading third-party forensic experts,” Hagberg said. “We will continue to communicate with our customers and contractors directly as necessary and devote the necessary resources to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”
Earlier, Lapsus$ claimed responsibility for the apparent data breach on the leak site and shared a sample of data allegedly obtained from Mercor, which TechCrunch reviewed. The sample included material pointing to Slack data and what appeared to be ticket data, as well as two videos purporting to show conversations between Mercor’s AI systems and contractors on its platform.
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Hagberg declined to answer follow-up questions about whether the incident was linked to Lapsus$ claims or whether any customer or contractor data had been accessed, infiltrated or misused.
The LiteLLM compromise first came to light last week after malicious code was discovered in a package related to the Y Combinator-backed startup’s open source project. While the malicious code was detected and removed within hours, the incident attracted scrutiny due to LiteLLM’s widespread use online, with the library being downloaded millions of times a day, according to security firm Snyk. The incident also prompted LiteLLM to make changes to its compliance processes, including switching from controversial startup Delve to Vanta for compliance certifications.
It remains unclear how many companies were affected by the LiteLLM-related incident or whether there was a data exposure as investigations continue.
