Fal Hit $4.5B Valuation, Triples in 5 Months; Patent AI Joins the 10× ARR Club
To be a full patent lifecycle collaboration platform
AI Infra explodes, driven by the demand from the enterprise and developers
I love tracking early-stage products that grow revenue fast—it usually means they’ve figured something out right.
Over the past year, two AI infra startups I’ve been watching closely have blown past $4B valuations and $100M ARR in record time.
The first is Fireworks, which raised $250M at a $4B valuation in October. Last year their ARR was about $6.5M; by May this year it had shot up to $130M, and by October it topped $280M annual revenue.
How? Fireworks offers hundreds of open-source models—text, image, audio, multimodal—combined with a blazing-fast inference engine that’s 40× faster and 8× cheaper than competitors. Their philosophy: “one-size-for-one AI,” not generic models. Most valuable data lives inside companies, not on the internet.
The second is Fal, which just closed a $140M Series D at a $4.5B valuation—a 3× jump from its $1.5B Series C five months ago.
Fal focuses on generative media for enterprise and developers, from images to video and audio.
They initially experimented with a “future store” concept but quickly realized efficiency and inference speed were the real bottlenecks. Now, with ~70 employees, Fal has turned that insight into explosive growth.
Fal’s explosive growth proves strong market demand—but they’re not alone. Another startup Runware has moved from tools to a Fal-like AI infra positioning, achieving 40× monthly revenue growth early on, and recently raised $50M in a new round.
In two years, Runware has powered more than 10 billion generations for 200K+ developers and more than 300 million end-users worldwide.
Patent AI Joins the 10× ARR Club
These stories highlight a broader trend: vertical AI is taking off. Legal AI like Harvey is growing fast, and now patent AI is entering the spotlight.
The patent industry is a classic “high-value, high-demand, painfully inefficient” market. Drafting and examining patents is tedious, yet the market is $200B+ annually.
