Mercor says it has been subjected to a cyberattack linked to the compromise of the open source LiteLLM project

Mercor, a popular AI recruitment startup, has confirmed a security incident linked to 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 the recent settlement of Project LiteLLM, which was linked to a hacking group called TeamPCP. Confirmation of the incident comes as extortion 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 including OpenAI and Anthropic to train AI models by contracting subject matter 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 following a $350 million Series C round led by Felicis Ventures in October 2025.

Merkur spokeswoman Heidi Hagberg confirmed to TechCrunch that the company “acted immediately” to contain and address the security incident.

“We are conducting a comprehensive investigation with the support of leading third-party forensic experts,” Hagberg said. “We will continue to communicate with our customers and contractors directly as appropriate and allocate the necessary resources to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”

Earlier, Lapsus$ claimed responsibility for the apparent data breach on its leak site and shared a sample of data allegedly taken from Mercor, which TechCrunch reviewed. The sample included reference material for Slack data and what appeared to be ticket data, as well as two videos purported to show conversations between Mercor’s AI systems and contractors on its platform.

Hagberg declined to answer follow-up questions about whether the incident was related to Lapsus$ claims, or whether customer or contractor data had been accessed, leaked or misused.

The LiteLLM hack originally surfaced last week after malicious code was discovered in a package linked to an open source startup project backed by Y Combinator. While the malicious code was identified and removed within hours, the incident has drawn scrutiny because LiteLLM is widely used across the Internet, with the library downloaded millions of times daily, 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 incident involving LiteLLM or whether any data exposure occurred, as investigations continue.