Inception
Inception develops the Mercury family. Its models generate or refine multiple tokens together. The company supplies these models through its API.
Company & leadership
- Chief executive
- Stefano Ermon
- Legal entity
- Inception AI, Inc.
Founders
- Stefano Ermon, Aditya Grover and Volodymyr Kuleshov
From university research to a model company
The founders brought research experience from Stanford, UCLA and Cornell. They had worked together for more than a decade. Mayfield says it led an investment in July 2024.
Mercury and company financing
Inception launched its first Mercury model in February 2025. It later announced a $50 million financing round led by Menlo Ventures. The company expanded from text and code generation into reasoning, editing and decision services.
Models in this profile
This profile covers the six models in the current API catalog. Mercury 2 and 2.5 retain limited legacy access. Earlier Mercury and Mercury Coder names are not listed as current models in that catalog.