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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Are OpenAI and Anthropic Overvalued? The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10x And Usage Will Explode 100x | The Future Is Not One AGI; It's Millions of Specialised Models with Lin Qiao, Founder and CEO @ Fireworks

Jul 20, 2026 · 1h 17m

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About this episode

Lin Qiao is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, the leading specialized intelligence and AI inference platform that last week raised $1.5BN at a whopping $17BN valuation. With just 200 people, the company has hit $1BN in ARR and expects to hit $2BN before the end of the year. Prior to Fireworks, Lin spent several years at Meta including on the founding team of PyTorch. AGENDA: 00:07 — Why Did Fireworks Bet on Inference When Everyone Else Was Chasing Training? 00:13 — Can Open-Source Models Turn AI Infrastructure into a Commodity? 00:19 — Should Enterprises Trust Chinese Open Models With Their Most Sensitive Data? 00:25 — Will Model Progress Keep Moving This Fast—or Are We Nearing a…