MercorA popular AI recruiting startup, has confirmed a security incident related to a supply chain attack involving the LiteLLM open source project.
The AI startup told TechCrunch on Tuesday that it was “one of thousands of companies” affected by a recent compromise of the LiteLLM project, which was linked to a hacking group called TeamPCP. Confirmation of the incident comes as extortionist hacking group Lapsus$ claimed to have targeted Mercor and gained access to its data.
It is not immediately clear how the Lapsus$ gang obtained the data stolen from Mercor as part of the TeamPCP cyberattack.
Founded in 2023, Mercor works with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to train AI models by hiring specialized domain experts such as scientists, doctors, and lawyers from markets like India. The startup says it facilitates more than $2 million in daily payments and was valued at 10 billion dollars following a $350 million Series C round led by Felicis Ventures in October 2025.
Mercor spokesperson Heidi Hagberg confirmed to TechCrunch that the company had “acted promptly” to contain and remediate the security incident.
“We are conducting a thorough investigation supported by leading outside forensic experts,” Hagberg said. “We will continue to communicate with our customers and contractors directly as appropriate and will dedicate the necessary resources to resolve the matter as quickly as possible.”
Previously, Lapsus$ claimed responsibility for the apparent data breach on its leak site and shared a sample of data supposedly taken from Mercor, which TechCrunch reviewed. The sample included material that referenced Slack data and what appeared to be ticketing data, as well as two videos that allegedly showed conversations between Mercor’s artificial intelligence systems and contractors on its platform.
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Hagberg declined to answer follow-up questions about whether the incident was related to Lapsus$ claims, or whether any customer or contractor data had been accessed, extracted or misused.
The LiteLLM Commitment originally emerged last week after malicious code was discovered in a package associated with the startup’s Y Combinator-backed open source project. While the malicious code was identified and removed within hours, the incident attracted scrutiny due to the widespread use of LiteLLM on the Internet, with the library downloaded millions of times a day, according to security firm Snyk. The incident also led LiteLLM to make changes to its compliance processes, including moving on from controversial startup Delve to Vanta to obtain compliance certifications.
It is not yet clear how many companies were affected by the LiteLLM-related incident or whether any data exposure occurred, as investigations continue.
