Fireworks AI runs and customizes open AI models (such as DeepSeek, Kimi and Llama) for businesses that want a cheaper alternative to closed models from OpenAI or Anthropic, or want to own a model tuned to their own data. Its growth is among the fastest in AI infrastructure: the company says annualized revenue passed $1 billion in July 2026, up from about $280 million in October 2025, and it was valued at $17.5 billion, with reported talks at $30-40 billion. Hiring Meta's chief strategy officer and former CFO, Dave Wehner, as CFO adds big-company finance experience. The risks: thin margins (outside estimates put gross margin near 50%), heavy reliance on Nvidia chips, competition from the big clouds and rivals such as Together AI, and an October 2026 security incident in which API keys stored in some customer accounts are believed to have been captured.
Timeline
Nov 6
Names Dave Wehner, Meta's chief strategy officer and its CFO from 2014 to 2022, as chief financial officer overseeing finance and operations.
Nov 3
Uses its first Forge conference to launch Fireworks Sovereign, which runs its software inside a customer's own data center or cloud, plus faster agent inference, half-price background processing and new enterprise spending and audit controls; several of these are still in preview, and all performance figures are company-reported.
Oct 22
Business Insider reports, citing unnamed sources, that Fireworks is in early talks to raise money at a $30-40 billion valuation, roughly double the July price; Fireworks declined to comment and no round size has been reported.
Oct 6
Detects unauthorized use of internal Fireworks credentials and says API keys and tokens that a limited number of customers stored as secrets for evaluation jobs are believed to have been captured; it says it has so far found no evidence that customer models, data or prompts were accessed, and it is working with an outside security firm.
Jul 16
Raises a $1.505 billion Series D at a $17.5 billion valuation led by Atreides, Index Ventures and TCV, with Nvidia participating, and says annualized revenue has passed $1 billion, five times the level at its previous round (company figure).
Mar 11
Launches on Microsoft Foundry in public preview, letting Azure customers use Fireworks-served open models through a single Azure endpoint.
Mar 4
Acquires Hathora, a real-time server orchestration startup best known for hosting multiplayer games, for its team and routing technology; terms were not disclosed.
Nov 24
Signs a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services for joint selling of open-model AI and a funded program for AI startups.
