MTS
AI Will Automate 50% of Digital Work in Years | Brendan Foody
Nov 11, 2026
About this episode
Mercor co-founder and co-CEO Brendan Foody discusses the company’s $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation and why post-training evaluations have become the primary bottleneck for frontier AI development. He outlines why reinforcement learning quickly saturates benchmarks, explains why he is “AGI long, but ASI short,” and breaks down why models have stalled at becoming virtual coworkers. Check out our sponsor Lovable: https://lovable.dev. Turn ideas into software people love. MTS is a live news and interview show covering technology, business, politics, and culture as it happens. Follow MTS: X | https://twitter.com/MTSlive YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@mtsituation Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/4HUNNmV1pjV7CW6Lphm1rM Apple | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mts/id1891088763 Substack | https://mtslive.substack.com/ Interested in sponsoring the show? sponsors@mts.now – Brought to you by: Mongo DB - Anyone can prototype an agent. Learn how to get them into production on September 30th in New York - register at https://www.mongodb.com/events/mongodb-local/nyc Lovable - Turn ideas into software people love with Lovable. Start today at https://lovable.dev/ Larridin - Finally prove what your AI investment is worth. Head to https://larridin.com/ today to start measuring your AI’s bottom line. Neon (by Databricks) - Get up to $100K in credits for your startup at https://neon.com/mts ElevenLabs - AI that communicates at human level across every channel and modality. https://elevenlabs.io/mts Arena - Measuring AI performance in the real world. https://arena.ai/ Kong - The AI connectivity platform. Connect APIs, LLMs, agents, and systems with serious security and governance. https://konghq.com Today’s stream is sponsored by VCX, the public ticker for private tech. Head over to http://getvcx.com to learn more Blitzy - Autonomous software development for enterprise codebases. Ship 5x faster. https://blitzy.com AdQuick - Make your brand a billboard. Out-of-home advertising as easy to scale as digital. https://adquick.com Chargebee - Billing and monetization infrastructure for the AI era. https://www.chargebee.com/ – Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:59) Deploying Mercor’s Series D Capital (02:32) RSI Timelines and Saturation (05:46) Enterprise Post-Training Adoption (06:53) Spending More on Inference Than Salaries (09:18) The Frontier of Complex Tasks (10:33) Why Virtual Coworkers Have Stalled (11:59) Will Self-Improving Models Replace Mercor – Note: This podcast is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies and securities discussed; do your own research before acting on anything you hear.