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Fireworks AI

also referred to as: fireworks

28 statements across 7 episodes · 19 bullish · 1 bearish · 5 people on the record · first statement Apr 19, 2019 by Dylan Field · said 79 times in 25 episodes since 2024 · across every show →

Mentions by year

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (44), Lin Qiao (7), Jerry Murdock (7), Jason Lemkin (4), Nikesh Arora (2), Everett Randle (2), Eric Vishria (2), Rory O'Driscoll (1)

tap a year for its mentions
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2026 73 mentions in 20 episodes 4 per episode
2025 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Fireworks AI, oldest first

Apr 19, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Adobe killing Fireworks drove Sketch's early success, says Figma CEO
“At the time, there were not many competitors out there that were interesting. I think Sketch, it was launched at the time, but not many people were using it. Really, fireworks being killed was what put the wind and sketches sales.”
Dylan Field Apr 19, 2019 ▶ 7:47 20VC: Figma Founder Dylan Field on The Biggest Mistakes Young Founders Most Often Make, How To Go Slow To Go Fast With Venture Dollars & How The Design Process Will Fundamentally Change Over The Next 5-10 Years
Jul 31, 2025 bullish
Assertion Open · timeframe Jul 2025
Stebbings: Benchmark AI portfolio companies HeyGen, Sierra, and Fireworks hit $100M+ ARR
“McCaw over a hundred million in ARR. Hey Jen hitting a hundred million in ARR. Fireworks a hundred and forty million in ARR. Sierra with Brett Taylor over a hundred million in ARR.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 5:24 Why Apple Needs a Management Overhaul & Why Google is Catching Up with Hyperscalers · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lin Qiao: AI future will feature millions of specialized models, not AGI
“I really believe the future will not be a few small number of AGI models dominating the world. I really believe the future will be, it may be scary, but I think that's true, it will be millions of specialized models, one per application, per use case.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 20:59 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lin Qiao: The future of AI is private, specialized intelligence
“We believe the future of the frontier of the intelligence, actually private intelligence, our specialized intelligence.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 5:22 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lin Qiao: Fireworks runs distributed RL across 5-6 global data center regions
“We've designed a fully distributed system. We run across five, six data center regions globally, and tap into scattered GPUs, and they are able to run massive jobs, our jobs.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 36:27 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lin Qiao: Fireworks has achieved 5x to 10x inference cost reductions
“What we have seen in the past is five times to 10 times cost reduction.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 19:19 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Qiao: AI model routing will evolve into fully automated self-learning systems
“We also think there's a space to build a automatic routing system that can learn by itself, and that compound with automatic tuning system eventually. We think it should all be automated, and then you can see a self-evolving system based on what flow through y…”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 31:41 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lin Qiao: Fireworks processes over 40 trillion tokens daily
“Today we process more than 40 trillion tokens a day. So majority of those tokens are coming from a customized model, not from off-the-shelf models, are coming from a customized model.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 40:59 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Fireworks AI uses open-source models internally for hiring, finance, and coding
“So within, ah, within Firewalls, obviously, we dock for our own product. We use OpenModel to drive our recruiting process, candidate sourcing, and the feedback collection. We use OpenModel to even drive some internal finance processes. Obviously, for coding, w…”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 13:08 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Insight
Qiao: Enterprise AI frontier is routing architecture, not single models
“So again, my thinking of what is the frontier is not just this one model. The frontier could be your special routing mechanism for your business, and you decompose that based on, hey, in order to fulfill this task, and you need a highly intelligent layer, mayb…”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 30:48 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2029
Lin Qiao: Fireworks AI will not enter the application layer
“We absolutely are not going to move into application layer. Very clear to us.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 0:34 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 negative
Opinion
Qiao: Anthropic relies on a single-AGI belief over specialization
“I view Anthropic as a company fully believing AGI.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 5:57 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stebbings: Fireworks can become a $500 billion company
“If so, fireworks, honestly, It can be a five hundred billion dollar company.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 1:08 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lin Qiao: Most world data is private enterprise data, not public internet
“If you think intelligence is a derivative of data, then majority of the data is actually not used for training a general intelligence model. The training data is coming from public internet and the label data. Public internet is very small. Corpus of data comp…”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 4:31 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Fireworks achieves exact bit equivalence between AI training and inference
“Between the training system and the inference system, when models move over, We have bit equivalence. So, as in, the numerics are fully the same. We do not lose a bit of accuracy.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 52:06 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026
Disclosure
Fireworks AI counts Geico and Capital One as enterprise customers
“We have customers like Geico, like Capital One, all these companies.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 1:26:16 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lin Qiao: All major AI coding companies use Fireworks infrastructure
“I think all major coding companies are on us.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 38:40 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026
Assertion Supported
Qiao: Fireworks AI currently has 200 employees
“So today we're at 200 people.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 1:15:35 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Qiao: Fireworks could optimize gross margins now but chooses rapid expansion
“If our focus is only optimized growth margin, we absolutely can do that, but we are sacrificing the speed of growth because we want to go everywhere.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 55:24 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Disclosure
Stebbings wrote a $10M check for Fireworks after a 15-minute meeting
“This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and in the hot seat today, a founder who I wrote a ten million dollar check for after just a 15 minute meeting, Lin Kuo, founder of Fireworks.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 0:38 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lin Qiao: Major AI base IQ leaps will occur every 9-12 months
“I see those as every year or every three quarters, there's a major leap.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 27:56 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Qiao: Fireworks daily token count could grow 20x-100x by next year
“Anywhere ranging from 20 to a hundred X could be possible.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 41:22 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Qiao: Cursor was a single-digit million-dollar company before 1000x growth
“I would say Curso is the first company they have decided to work with us. Early on. I still remember when they worked with us, they were single digit million dollar. Very small. That's only two years ago. They grew by a hundred, a thousand X over two years.”
Lin Qiao Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 44:29 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Aug 2, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stebbings: AI infrastructure companies operate at mid-thirties gross margins
“We're seeing a load of businesses like your fireworks of the world, where they're at the 30% style, mid thirties margin base. And that's very different to software margins that were 65 to 80.”
Harry Stebbings Aug 2, 2026 ▶ 53:28 Arena CEO: There Will be a $100BN US Open-Source Model & Data is a Trillion Dollar Market
Aug 9, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Atallah: Users run open-weight models on inference startups, not hyperscalers
“In reality, like, you know, how often do you hear people running, you know, GLM on a hyperscaler? Never. Like they're using the inference providers like fireworks and together and there's like a big list that we see doing the best job of hosting all the open w…”
Alex Atallah Aug 9, 2026 ▶ 4:35 OpenRouter CEO: Why Chinese Open Models Are Beating the US | Why Enterprises Fear OpenAI & Anthropic
Aug 22, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Murdock: Fireworks Is 10x Better Business Than Baseten Due to Capital Efficiency
“I bet on fireworks over base 10, 10 times better business, in my opinion, because they're more capital efficient.”
Jerry Murdock Aug 22, 2026 ▶ 9:22 The AI Bubble WILL Burst | Should we be fearful of Chinese Open-Source | Jerry Murdock
Aug 22, 2026 bullish
Insight
Murdock: AI tokens are not commodities because model customization changes their value
“I disagree with a token as a token. That may be true at the moment with pretty much frontier models, but I disagree with it because companies like fireworks and others are helping companies to customize. The more you customize the model, the more the token cha…”
Jerry Murdock Aug 22, 2026 ▶ 15:03 The AI Bubble WILL Burst | Should we be fearful of Chinese Open-Source | Jerry Murdock
Aug 31, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stebbings: Fireworks AI operates at 30% to 35% gross margins
“Lynn was on the show and she was like, yeah, we're at 30, 35%. We hope to be more over time.”
Harry Stebbings Aug 31, 2026 ▶ 3:08 ClickHouse CEO: AI Margins Need to Improve | Revenue Concentration Should be a Concern
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