Fireworks AI Soars from $552M to $4B Valuation — Two Ukrainians Among Founders
The American startup Fireworks AI is preparing for a Series C funding round that could boost its valuation to a staggering $4 billion, up from its current $552 million. The company was founded in late 2022, and among its co-founders are two Ukrainians — Dmytro Dzhulgakov and Dmytro Ivchenko. The connection was highlighted by Andrii Brodetskyi, an Investment Associate at Horizon Capital. The Scroll.media editorial team offers a quick look into the story behind Fireworks AI.
How Fireworks AI Was Born
American media credit Fireworks AI’s rapid ascent to the deep technical experience of its founding team. Many of them have witnessed and shaped major technological shifts over the past decade.
One such founder is Lin Qiao, whose career path has taken her from IBM to LinkedIn and eventually to Meta. At Meta, she experienced the shift from CPUs to GPUs firsthand, sparking a wave of innovation and creating a new need: scalable AI infrastructure for businesses.
Then, in 2022, ChatGPT burst onto the scene, radically changing how people interact with AI. That same year, Fireworks AI was launched.
The company’s core mission is to help businesses train and deploy AI models more efficiently.
«Companies wanted to prioritize AI but lacked the infrastructure, resources, and talent,» says Lin Qiao.
Fireworks AI stepped in to fill that gap — offering accessible, scalable solutions. For example, their technology helped Quora’s chatbot triple its response speed. The number of developers using Fireworks AI jumped from 12,000 in February 2024 to 23,000 by year’s end.
Ukrainian talent behind the startup
The co-founding team includes several former Meta engineers.Dmytro Dzhulgakov, originally from Kharkiv, joined Facebook in 2011. In recent years, he worked closely with Lin Qiao on the PyTorch project, a widely used library in deep learning.
Dmytro Ivchenko is a graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic. After relocating to the US, he worked at LinkedIn and later at Meta, where he was also part of the PyTorch team.
Investments
Fireworks AI has quickly attracted top-tier investors:
- March 2024: Raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Databricks Ventures, and others.
- July 2024: Secured $52 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital, with backing from NVIDIA, AMD, MongoDB, and more. The valuation soared to $552 million.
Now, just a year later, the company is preparing for a major new funding round. Insiders report that Fireworks AI is already profitable, growing at an astonishing x20 year-over-year, with $130 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
Fireworks AI Soars from $552M to $4B Valuation — Two Ukrainians Among Founders
The American startup Fireworks AI is preparing for a Series C funding round that could boost its valuation to a staggering $4 billion, up from its current $552 million. The company was founded in late 2022, and among its co-founders are two Ukrainians — Dmytro Dzhulgakov and Dmytro Ivchenko. The connection was highlighted by Andrii Brodetskyi, an Investment Associate at Horizon Capital. The Scroll.media editorial team offers a quick look into the story behind Fireworks AI.
How Fireworks AI Was Born
American media credit Fireworks AI’s rapid ascent to the deep technical experience of its founding team. Many of them have witnessed and shaped major technological shifts over the past decade.
One such founder is Lin Qiao, whose career path has taken her from IBM to LinkedIn and eventually to Meta. At Meta, she experienced the shift from CPUs to GPUs firsthand, sparking a wave of innovation and creating a new need: scalable AI infrastructure for businesses.
Then, in 2022, ChatGPT burst onto the scene, radically changing how people interact with AI. That same year, Fireworks AI was launched.
The company’s core mission is to help businesses train and deploy AI models more efficiently.
«Companies wanted to prioritize AI but lacked the infrastructure, resources, and talent,» says Lin Qiao.
Fireworks AI stepped in to fill that gap — offering accessible, scalable solutions. For example, their technology helped Quora’s chatbot triple its response speed. The number of developers using Fireworks AI jumped from 12,000 in February 2024 to 23,000 by year’s end.
Ukrainian talent behind the startup
The co-founding team includes several former Meta engineers.Dmytro Dzhulgakov, originally from Kharkiv, joined Facebook in 2011. In recent years, he worked closely with Lin Qiao on the PyTorch project, a widely used library in deep learning.
Dmytro Ivchenko is a graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic. After relocating to the US, he worked at LinkedIn and later at Meta, where he was also part of the PyTorch team.
Investments
Fireworks AI has quickly attracted top-tier investors:
- March 2024: Raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Databricks Ventures, and others.
- July 2024: Secured $52 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital, with backing from NVIDIA, AMD, MongoDB, and more. The valuation soared to $552 million.
Now, just a year later, the company is preparing for a major new funding round. Insiders report that Fireworks AI is already profitable, growing at an astonishing x20 year-over-year, with $130 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
