# Fireworks AI revenue, valuation & funding

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/companies/fireworks-ai/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Fireworks AI was valued at $17.5B in its Series D in July 2026, when it said its yearly revenue run rate had passed $1 billion. It's a private company and hasn't filed for an IPO.

Checked Nov 7, 2026

## At a glance

- Valuation: $17.5B at its Series D, in July 2026. It was reported in October 2026 to be in early talks to raise at $30B to $40B.
- Revenue: a yearly run rate above $1 billion in July 2026, as the company said. Fireworks publishes no audited results.
- Status: private. No stock ticker. It hasn't filed for an IPO.
- Founded: 2022, by engineers from Meta's AI and machine-learning groups.
- CEO: [Lin Qiao](https://realalpha.app/builders/lin-qiao/), formerly head of PyTorch at Meta.
- Headquarters: San Mateo, California.
- Investors: Benchmark, Sequoia, Lightspeed, Index Ventures, Evantic, Atreides Management and TCV lead its investors. Nvidia joined the Series D.
- Products: Inference, Training, Nexus and Sovereign, on one platform for open models.

## Is Fireworks AI public? Can you buy its stock?

No. Fireworks AI is a private company, so its shares don't trade on any stock exchange and it has no ticker symbol.

Fireworks hasn't filed for an IPO, and its executives haven't said when it might list, [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding) reported in September 2026.

Its shares are held by its founders, staff and investors. On September 25, 2026, Lin Qiao announced [a $132 million tender offer](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding) for employees, led by Atreides. The share price wasn't disclosed. This page reports facts and gives no investment advice.

## Valuation, round by round

Its valuation went from $552M in July 2024 to $17.5B in July 2026, more than thirty times in two years.

- Oct 2026 · $30B · In talks · — · [Startup Fortune](https://startupfortune.com/fireworks-ai-is-in-talks-to-double-its-valuation-to-40-billion-dollars/)
- Jul 2026 · $17.5B · $1.505B · Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement)
- Oct 2025 · $4B · $250M · Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Evantic · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-ai-series-c-funding)
- Jul 2024 · $552M · $52M · Sequoia Capital · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-ai-series-b-compound-ai)
- Mar 2024 · — · $25M · Benchmark · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)

The October 2026 talks at $30B to $40B rest on a report of early talks, and Fireworks declined to comment. No valuation was reported for the $25 million Series A.

## Revenue

Fireworks doesn't publish results. It said its run rate passed $280 million in October 2025 and $1 billion in July 2026, more than tripling in under a year.

- Jul 2026 · $1B · Company · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement)
- Jun 2026 · $1B · Estimate · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)
- May 2026 · $800M · Estimate · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)
- Dec 2025 · $305M · Estimate · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)
- Oct 2025 · $280M · Company · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-ai-series-c-funding)

A run rate is a month's revenue times twelve. It isn't a year's audited revenue, and the December, May and June figures are Sacra's estimates.

## How Fireworks AI makes money

Fireworks charges for use of its platform. According to [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/), serverless inference is billed per token and fine-tuning per training token. Reinforcement fine-tuning is billed per GPU-hour, and reserved capacity is contracted separately.

- **Serverless.** Pay per token with no commitment, starting from $0.05 per 1M input tokens. · [Fireworks AI pricing page](https://fireworks.ai/pricing)
- **Nexus plans.** Pro costs $8 a month for individual developers. There is also a per-seat Team plan and custom Enterprise terms. · [Fireworks AI pricing page](https://fireworks.ai/pricing)
- **Microsoft Foundry.** Fireworks is a first-party provider there, so usage counts toward a customer's Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment. · [Fireworks AI pricing page](https://fireworks.ai/pricing)
- **AWS.** Its field and partner sales include an AWS Strategic Collaboration Agreement, according to Sacra. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)
- **Margins.** Sacra estimates gross margin at approximately 50%. According to the same Sacra estimate, the company has told investors it targets 60%. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)

## Products

Fireworks sells [one platform](https://fireworks.ai) to run, ensemble and train open models. Its product line includes Inference, Nexus, Training and Sovereign.

- **Inference.** Fireworks said in July 2026 that it offers more than 200 models across text, image and multimodal formats. · [Business Wire (Fireworks press release)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260716264405/en/Fireworks-Raises-a-$1.5-Billion-Series-D-to-Lead-the-Specialized-Intelligence-Revolution)
- **Training API** became generally available on August 31, 2026. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-acquires-hathora)
- **Muse Glimmer 30B SFT** training is free through November 30, 2026, in the UI and the Serverless Training API. · [Fireworks AI pricing page](https://fireworks.ai/pricing)
- **Nexus** is sold for code and co-work, beside the Platform for systems and apps. · [Fireworks AI pricing page](https://fireworks.ai/pricing)
- **Sovereign** is Fireworks-managed inference on GPUs in a customer's own cloud account or data center. It's in private preview for Enterprise customers. · [Fireworks AI pricing page](https://fireworks.ai/pricing)
- **Hathora,** a global compute-orchestration platform, was acquired in March 2026. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-acquires-hathora)

## Customers

Fireworks says on its [homepage](https://fireworks.ai) that more than 10,000 companies trust its platform.

In its July 2026 [release](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260716264405/en/Fireworks-Raises-a-$1.5-Billion-Series-D-to-Lead-the-Specialized-Intelligence-Revolution), it said daily tokens served nearly tripled in a year. The figure went from 15 trillion to more than 40 trillion.

- **[Cursor](https://realalpha.app/companies/#cursor),** its largest customer, brought in about half of Fireworks' 2025 revenue. · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)
- **Doximity, Revolut and Shopify** were named in the Series D release as companies training and serving models on Fireworks. · [Business Wire (Fireworks press release)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260716264405/en/Fireworks-Raises-a-$1.5-Billion-Series-D-to-Lead-the-Specialized-Intelligence-Revolution)
- **[Perplexity](https://realalpha.app/companies/perplexity/), Notion, Sourcegraph, Uber, DoorDash and Upwork** are among the customers Sacra names, along with Cursor and Shopify. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)

## Leadership

Fireworks lists seven co-founders. Most come from PyTorch and machine-learning teams at Meta, and one from Google.

- **[Lin Qiao](https://realalpha.app/builders/lin-qiao/),** co-founder and CEO. She was previously head of PyTorch at Meta. · [Fireworks AI team page](https://fireworks.ai/team)
- **George Hu,** president, hired in April 2026. · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)
- **Benny Chen,** co-founder. Previously Meta ads infra lead. · [Fireworks AI team page](https://fireworks.ai/team)
- **Chenyu Zhao,** co-founder. Previously Google Vertex AI lead. · [Fireworks AI team page](https://fireworks.ai/team)
- **Dmytro Dzhulgakov,** co-founder. Previously a PyTorch core maintainer at Meta. · [Fireworks AI team page](https://fireworks.ai/team)
- **Dmytro Ivchenko,** co-founder. Previously PyTorch for ranking lead at Meta. · [Fireworks AI team page](https://fireworks.ai/team)
- **James Reed,** co-founder. Previously worked on the PyTorch compiler at Meta. · [Fireworks AI team page](https://fireworks.ai/team)
- **Pawel Garbacki,** co-founder. Previously Meta Newsfeed core ML lead. · [Fireworks AI team page](https://fireworks.ai/team)

## Who owns Fireworks AI?

Its founders, staff and investors. As a private company it doesn't publish who holds what, and no stake has been disclosed.

- **Benchmark** led the $25 million Series A, disclosed in March 2024, with Sequoia joining. · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)
- **Sequoia Capital** led the $52M Series B in July 2024. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-ai-series-b-compound-ai)
- **Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures and Evantic** co-led the $250 million Series C in October 2025. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-ai-series-c-funding)
- **Atreides Management, Index Ventures and TCV** led the $1.505 billion Series D in July 2026. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement)
- **[Nvidia](https://realalpha.app/companies/#nvidia), 20VC, Bessemer Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures** joined the Series D. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement)
- **Insight Partners and Lone Pine Capital** are also named among Series D investors in the company's release. · [Business Wire (Fireworks press release)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260716264405/en/Fireworks-Raises-a-$1.5-Billion-Series-D-to-Lead-the-Specialized-Intelligence-Revolution)

## Competitors

[Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/) says Fireworks competes "more as an enterprise inference engineering platform" than as a model catalog. It sees the big cloud providers as the largest threat.

- **AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI and Microsoft Azure,** which Sacra calls the most threatening competitors. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)
- **[Together AI](https://realalpha.app/companies/together-ai/),** which Sacra calls its closest direct competitor. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)
- **[Baseten](https://realalpha.app/companies/baseten/), Replicate, Groq, [Cerebras](https://realalpha.app/companies/cerebras/), SambaNova, Databricks and OpenRouter,** also named as rivals by Sacra. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/)

## Timeline and latest news

- Oct 20, 2026 · Business Insider reported early talks to raise at a $30B to $40B valuation. · [Startup Fortune](https://startupfortune.com/fireworks-ai-is-in-talks-to-double-its-valuation-to-40-billion-dollars/)
- Oct 6, 2026 · Fireworks identified a security incident involving its internal credentials. · [Fireworks AI security bulletin](https://fireworks.ai/security/bulletins/october-2026-security-incident)
- Sep 25, 2026 · Lin Qiao announced a $132 million employee tender offer led by Atreides. · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)
- Aug 31, 2026 · The Training API became generally available. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-acquires-hathora)
- Jul 16, 2026 · Raised a $1.505 billion Series D at a $17.5 billion valuation. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement)
- Jul 16, 2026 · Said its yearly revenue run rate had passed $1 billion. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement)
- May 2026 · Bloomberg reported talks to raise at a $15 billion valuation. · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)
- Apr 2026 · Hired George Hu as president. · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)
- Mar 8, 2026 · Acquired Hathora, a compute-orchestration platform. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-acquires-hathora)
- Oct 28, 2025 · Raised a $250 million Series C at a $4 billion valuation. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-ai-series-c-funding)
- Jul 11, 2024 · Raised a $52M Series B led by Sequoia Capital at a $552M valuation. · [Fireworks AI blog](https://fireworks.ai/blog/fireworks-ai-series-b-compound-ai)
- Mar 2024 · A $25 million Series A led by Benchmark was disclosed. · [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding)

## Legal matters

On October 6, 2026, Fireworks identified a security incident. An unauthorized third party used internal Fireworks credentials to reach environment variables in evaluation jobs. It affected a limited number of customer accounts, according to its [security bulletin](https://fireworks.ai/security/bulletins/october-2026-security-incident). The bulletin was last updated October 10, 2026, and marked active monitoring.

## Questions people ask

### Is Fireworks AI a public company? Can I buy Fireworks AI stock?

No. Fireworks AI is private and has no ticker, so its shares aren't sold on any exchange.

### When will Fireworks AI IPO?

It hasn't filed for an IPO, and its executives haven't said when it might list, according to [Revenue Memo](https://www.revenuememo.com/p/fireworks-ai-funding).

### Who owns Fireworks AI?

Its founders, staff and investors, including Benchmark, Sequoia, Lightspeed, Index Ventures, Evantic, Atreides Management and TCV. Stakes haven't been disclosed.

### Who is the CEO of Fireworks AI?

[Lin Qiao](https://realalpha.app/builders/lin-qiao/), a co-founder who was previously head of PyTorch at Meta.

### Who founded Fireworks AI?

Seven co-founders in 2022. They are Lin Qiao, Benny Chen, Chenyu Zhao, Dmytro Dzhulgakov, Dmytro Ivchenko, James Reed and Pawel Garbacki, from Meta and Google.

### How much is Fireworks AI worth?

$17.5B at its July 2026 [Series D](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement). It was reported in October 2026 to be in early talks at $30B to $40B, with no round finalized.

### How much revenue does Fireworks AI make?

It said in [July 2026](https://fireworks.ai/blog/series-d-announcement) that its yearly run rate had passed $1 billion, up from more than $280 million in October 2025.

### Is Fireworks AI profitable?

It doesn't publish profit or loss figures. [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/fireworks-ai/) estimates its gross margin at approximately 50%, which isn't the same as a profit.

### How does Fireworks AI make money?

Mostly usage-based billing for inference and training on open models, from $0.05 per 1M input tokens. Its Nexus product also has monthly plans.

### Where is Fireworks AI headquartered?

San Mateo, California.

## People on Real Alpha

- [Lin Qiao](https://realalpha.app/builders/lin-qiao/), Co-founder & CEO, Fireworks AI

## How this page is sourced

Each figure links to the filing, company statement or news report it came from, with its date. Run rates are what reporters were told, not audited results; estimates and unconfirmed reports are marked. Quotes are what each person said on the record, with the minute they said it.