Fireworks AI, the startup specializing in AI model inference acceleration, is reportedly in talks with investors for a new funding round that would value the company at a whopping $15 billion post-money. The round is expected to be led by Index Ventures, a repeat investor.
Founded in 2022 by a team of former Meta engineers, the company is led by co-founder and CTO Dmytro Dzhulgakov. Inference acceleration—the process of running trained AI models efficiently—has become a gold rush in the generative AI boom, with startups like Fireworks renting out compute and selling API access.
Just last October, Fireworks raised $250 million at a $4 billion valuation, with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Evantic co-leading. Its marquee customer? Cursor, the popular AI-powered code editor.
Fireworks isn't the only inference startup seeing its valuation skyrocket. Rival Baseten is also in talks to raise $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation.