The funding round was led by Benchmark, with participation from Sequoia Capital and angel investors including Databricks and Snowflake. Fireworks.ai's CEO, Lin Qiao, previously led the AI platform development team at Meta, where she gained the expertise to create an API-based tool that makes AI power accessible to any company, regardless of size. The strategic investment from Databricks and Snowflake is notable as they are both data storage tools, and Fireworks.ai will enable users to utilize that data effectively.
Key takeaways:
- Fireworks.ai, a startup in the generative AI space, has raised $25 million and boasts the largest open source model API with over 12,000 users.
- The company's approach allows businesses to fine-tune existing models to their specific needs, and its API enables developers to add generative AI capabilities to their applications.
- Fireworks.ai keeps costs down by limiting the model size to between 7 billion and 13 billion parameters, enabling developers to focus on smaller, focused data sets for limited business use cases.
- The company's funding round in 2022 was led by Benchmark, with participation from Sequoia Capital and angel investors including Databricks and Snowflake, which are strategic investors due to their roles as data storage tools.