Lin Qiao, CEO and co-founder of Fireworks AI, is a trailblazing entrepreneur with a deep passion for the intersection of technology and business. From humble beginnings to building one of the most cutting-edge AI infrastructure companies, Lin’s journey is one of determination, innovation, and laser focus. Fireworks AI, which started in late 2022, has grown at a staggering pace, fueled by Lin’s visionary leadership and her team’s deep experience from working at Meta. Today, the company processes over 150 billion tokens per day and generates more than 1 million images daily.
Let’s dive into Lin’s journey of entrepreneurship, the formation of Fireworks AI, and the strategies that took the company to unprecedented heights.
Fireworks AI – https://fireworks.ai/
Lin Qiao (LinkedIn) – Lin Qiao
Lin Qiao (X) – https://x.com/lqiao
From Meta to Fireworks AI: The Beginning of an AI Revolution
Before founding Fireworks AI, Lin and her co-founders spent years at Meta, where they built AI infrastructure from the ground up. At Meta, they worked on solving massive AI challenges, helping Meta transition to an AI-first company. This experience was invaluable, giving Lin and her team a deep understanding of AI technology, hardware, software, and the pain points companies face in implementing AI at scale.
The Shift to AI:
During Lin’s time leading Meta’s data infrastructure team, she observed an explosive growth in data—a clear sign that AI was the future. The majority of data growth was driven by AI models, and Lin quickly realized that AI would be central to the next wave of technological transformation. She shifted her focus to AI, building a team from just 5 members to over 300 in five years.
But while Meta had the resources to support AI, Lin knew that most companies lacked the infrastructure, teams, and expertise to navigate this new landscape. This gap in the market sparked the idea for Fireworks AI.
Scaling Fireworks AI: Tackling AI Challenges for Businesses
With Fireworks AI, Lin’s mission was clear: to enable companies to adopt AI-first strategies without the need for massive AI teams or prohibitively expensive infrastructure. In an industry where AI models are large, slow to run, and reliant on expensive GPUs, many businesses were struggling to adopt AI. Fireworks AI stepped in to provide innovative solutions that significantly reduce costs while delivering high-performance AI capabilities.
Key Challenge #1: GPU Costs and Latency
One of the biggest pain points for companies looking to integrate AI is the massive cost associated with acquiring and running GPUs. As Lin mentioned, “If they’re lucky enough to get GPUs, they’ve never seen such a big bill before.” Fireworks AI’s software stack was specifically designed to minimize GPU needs and deliver fast response times, allowing businesses to scale their AI operations quickly and cost-effectively.
Key Challenge #2: Slow Response Times
For AI applications to be appealing, they must provide low-latency responses. Slow-running models simply don’t work for real-world applications. Fireworks AI solved this by optimizing the speed of AI models, making them more efficient and responsive for customers.
The Explosive Growth of Fireworks AI
Since its inception in 2022, Fireworks AI has experienced exponential growth. Within just six months, the company’s traffic increased 100x. The company raised a total of $77 million in funding, with Sequoia leading the latest $52 million round, bringing the company’s valuation to $552 million—four times its initial value.
This rapid growth is not just a result of technical innovation but also the startup’s relentless focus on solving real-world problems and delivering 10x results.
Lin’s Startup Strategy: The 10x Rule
One of Lin’s core philosophies is the idea of achieving 10x results. According to Lin, startups must not focus on incremental improvements, but instead push for massive leaps in performance and adoption.
“Startups are only here for 10x,” Lin says. Whether it’s 10x faster customer adoption, 10x faster infrastructure, or 10x scalability, the focus must always be on achieving outsized results. This mindset has driven Fireworks AI’s growth and continues to be a key driver of their success.
Overcoming Startup Challenges: Focus, Speed, and Saying No
In Lin’s experience, startups thrive on their ability to move fast and stay focused. Unlike established companies that can be bogged down by slow decision-making and coordination, startups can capitalize on their agility to outpace competitors.
Saying No to Distractions
For Lin, the ability to say no is one of the most important skills in building a successful startup. Startups are always tempted to take on new projects or features, but this can dilute focus and slow down progress. Lin emphasizes the importance of asking, “Does this project really move the bottom line of our business?” If the answer is no, then it’s crucial to turn it down.
Speed as an Advantage
Fireworks AI has been able to outrun larger competitors by making decisions quickly and staying laser-focused on their goals. Speed, Lin believes, is one of the biggest advantages startups have, and it’s something that Fireworks AI leverages to its full potential.
Expanding Beyond Text: The Future of Fireworks AI
As the company moves into 2023 and beyond, Fireworks AI is focused on expanding its capabilities beyond large language models to encompass multi-modality AI. Lin believes that in order to replicate real-world communication, AI models must be able to understand and generate text, images, and audio.
Multi-Modality AI
Fireworks AI’s platform already supports over 100 models across various modalities, including text, image, and audio models. This variety allows their customers to choose the models that best fit their needs, making the platform highly versatile and adaptable for a wide range of applications.
The Future of AI: Compound AI Systems
Lin’s vision for the future of AI lies in compound AI systems. These systems integrate multiple AI models, each specializing in specific tasks, and route requests to the most appropriate model. This routing system—powered by Fireworks AI’s proprietary function calling layer—ensures that customers receive the best possible answers by combining knowledge from various models and APIs.
By pulling together data from a wide range of sources, including APIs for weather, stock prices, and more, these compound AI systems represent the next frontier of AI innovation.
Lin’s Entrepreneurial Lessons: Aptitude Over Experience
In building Fireworks AI, Lin has learned that aptitude trumps experience. In a fast-moving industry like AI, the ability to learn quickly, solve problems, and adapt is far more valuable than years of experience. Lin looks for people who are “super hungry, super motivated” to join her team, as these qualities make all the difference in driving a startup forward.
Reflecting on Success: Imposter Syndrome and Self-Reflection
Even as a successful entrepreneur, Lin has faced imposter syndrome early in her career. But instead of letting it hold her back, she used it as a tool for self-reflection. This habit of constantly questioning and improving has helped her grow as a leader and has become a core part of Fireworks AI’s company culture.
Lin regularly engages her team in discussions about how they can improve processes, increase efficiency, and move faster. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement, Lin ensures that Fireworks AI remains agile and focused on delivering results.
Key Strategies and Lessons from Lin Qiao’s Journey
1. Focus on the Intersection of Technology and Business
- Lin Qiao’s career has been driven by her fascination with the intersection of technology and business. She identifies how pivotal shifts in technology can create massive business opportunities, from the mobile-first transition to the current AI-first revolution.
2. Build Scalable, Efficient Infrastructure
- One of Lin’s major achievements at Meta was scaling AI infrastructure from 5 people to a team of 300, enabling the processing of immense data volumes. At Fireworks AI, this focus continues as she aims to reduce the need for expensive hardware like GPUs.
3. Embrace Speed and Urgency
- Lin emphasizes the importance of speed in startups, advocating for rapid execution over incremental progress. She highlights that startups need to move 10x faster than competitors to gain a foothold in their industries.
4. Solve the Right Problems
- Lin repeatedly asks her team whether they are working on the right problems and challenges them to focus on initiatives that drive measurable impact.
5. Multi-Modality AI is the Future
- Understanding that real-world communication extends beyond text, Lin’s vision for Fireworks AI includes expanding into models that understand and generate images, audio, and beyond. This broadens AI’s real-world application.
6. Minimize Costs for Customers
- A central aspect of Fireworks AI’s value proposition is cost reduction, particularly in minimizing the need for expensive GPUs. This ensures that AI-driven businesses can scale without facing prohibitive operational costs.
7. Aptitude Over Experience
- Lin values hunger, motivation, and adaptability over experience, especially in fast-moving industries like AI. She believes that having the “fire in the belly” trumps all other qualifications.
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