Mercor, a popular AI recruitment startup, has confirmed a security incident associated with a supply chain attack involving the open source project LiteLLM.
The AI ​​startup told TechCrunch on Tuesday that it was “one of thousands of companies” affected by a recent compromise of LiteLLM’s project, which was linked to a hacker group called TeamPCP. The confirmation of the incident comes as extortion hacking group Lapsus$ claimed it had attacked Mercor and gained access to its data.
It is 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 including OpenAI and Anthropic to train AI models by contracting specialized domain experts such as scientists, doctors and lawyers from markets including India. The startup says it enables more than $2 million in daily payouts and was valued at $10 billion after a $350 million Series C round led by Felicis Ventures in October 2025.
Mercor spokesperson Heidi Hagberg confirmed to TechCrunch that the company had “moved promptly” to contain and remediate the security incident.
“We are conducting a thorough investigation supported by leading third-party forensic experts,” Hagberg said. “We will continue to communicate with our customers and contractors directly as needed and devote the necessary resources to resolve the matter as quickly as possible.”
Earlier, Lapsus$ claimed responsibility for the apparent data breach on its leak site, sharing a sample of data allegedly taken from Mercor that TechCrunch reviewed. The sample included material referencing Slack data and what appeared to be ticket data, as well as two videos purportedly showing 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 connected to claims by Lapsus$ or whether any customer or contractor data had been accessed, exfiltrated or misused.
The compromise of LiteLLM initially surfaced last week after malicious code was discovered in a package associated with the Y Combinator-backed startup’s open source project. While the malicious code was identified and removed within hours, the incident drew scrutiny due to LiteLLM’s widespread use on the Internet, where the library was 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 to obtain compliance certifications.
It remains unclear how many companies were affected by the LiteLLM-related incident or whether any data exposure occurred as investigations continue.