Fireworks AI, a startup that helps companies build and run their own artificial-intelligence models, has raised $1.5 billion in fresh funding, one of the biggest technology deals of the week. The round closed on 16 July 2026.
The financing values the company at $17.5 billion and was led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures and TCV, with chipmaker Nvidia and more than half a dozen other backers also taking part.
Fireworks runs a cloud platform that lets developers fine-tune open-source AI models, rent managed clusters of graphics chips, and automate the heavy work of training. In simple terms, it provides the engine room that other businesses use to power their AI, without each one having to build costly infrastructure from scratch.
The company says business is booming. It recently passed $1 billion in annualised revenue, a fivefold jump from a year earlier, and now processes more than 40 trillion tokens, the small units of data AI models read and write, every single day.
Its customer list already includes major names such as Samsung Electronics and software firm GitLab, a sign that large enterprises are increasingly turning to specialised, self-owned AI rather than relying only on off-the-shelf chatbots.
Co-founder and chief executive Lin Qiao framed the pitch around ownership. “Every company holds knowledge no one else has: its data, its workflows, its customers, its definition of quality. Fireworks turns that knowledge into specialized intelligence they own,” she said.
Fireworks plans to use the money to expand its computing infrastructure, hire more engineers and deepen partnerships with cloud providers including Microsoft and Nvidia.
Source: SiliconANGLE.
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