How Did Fireworks Turn **$1.5B** Into 40T Tokens? 🔥💰🤖

TL;DR

• Fireworks AI closed $1.5B Series D, hits scale
• Emergent became India’s sixth AI unicorn this year
• DeepSeek and Shield AI pursue mega follow-on rounds
• Agentic platforms flood sectors from banking to telecom

HEADLINES

Fireworks AI hits $1.5B Series D, $1B revenue 🚀🔗

Emergent becomes unicorn with $130M Series C 🦄🔗

DeepSeek closes $7.4B first external round 🧠🔗

Shield AI outlines $1.5B Series G war chest ✈️🔗

Ushur launches agentic platform for end‑to‑end journeys 🤖🔗

FROM THE BIG PLAYERS

SoftBank Group invested $1.4B in Skild AI 🤖🔗

Index Ventures co-led $1.5B into Fireworks AI 🔥🔗

Creaegis led $130M in Emergent 🦄🔗

Tencent and CATL backed $7.4B round in DeepSeek 🐉🔗

RAISES

Fireworks AI raised $1.5B in Series D 💥🔗

Emergent raised $130M in Series C 🧱🔗

DeepSeek raised $7.4B in first external round 🐯🔗

Horizon3.ai raised $250M in Series E 🛡️🔗

Skild AI raised $1.4B in Series C 🤖🔗

RAISING

Shield AI is looking to raise $1.5B in a Series G for autonomous defense platforms 🛩️🔗

DeepSeek is looking to raise $1.5B in a new round for pre‑IPO scale 🐲🔗

General Intuition is looking to raise $300M in a Series B for world‑model foundation agents 🧩🔗

Cursor is looking to raise $2B+ in a Series D for AI coding co‑pilot expansion ⌨️🔗

Upscale AI is looking to raise a Series C at $2B valuation for growth‑stage gen‑AI tooling 📈🔗

NEW LAUNCHES

Kore.ai launched Artemis Agent Platform 🛰️🔗

Abrigo launched Agentic Platform Experience (APX) 🏦🔗

Ushur unveiled Ushur Agentic Platform 📬🔗

Sedai launched AI Agent Optimization platform ⚙️🔗

Wrike launched Conversational AI Agent Builder 📂🔗

TRY THESE TOOLS

Fireworks AI serves cheap open‑weight inference at scale 🧨🔗

Emergent lets non‑technical users build agents visually 🧱🔗

Kore.ai Artemis offers governed enterprise agent orchestration 🕹️🔗

Ushur Agentic Platform automates full customer‑service journeys 📞🔗

METRICS

Fireworks AI processes 40T tokens daily, passes $1B run‑rate 📊🔗

Global AI raises reached $276B, 78% of VC capital 🌍🔗

DeepSeek added $7.4B at $50B+ valuation 🐼🔗

Skild AI raised $1.4B, robotics valuation tops $14B 🤖🔗

BENCHMARKS

Stanford AI Index 2026 tracks multi‑billion‑dollar frontier rounds globally 📘🔗

Rothschild & Co notes AI at 78% of growth equity 📊🔗

NFAP lists Fireworks among immigrant‑founded billion‑dollar firms 🇺🇸🔗

PHBench establishes benchmark for predicting Series A from launch 📐🔗

INFRA & COSTS

Alphabet planning $80B stock raise for AI build‑out ⚙️🔗

CoreWeave holds $12B OpenAI GPU contract 🖥️🔗

Fireworks AI faces GPU‑driven, supplier‑constrained cost environment 💾🔗

Groq leans into inference cloud on custom chips 🔌🔗

VALUATIONS

Fireworks AI valued at $17.5B after Series D 🏷️🔗

Emergent hits $1.5B valuation in Series C 🦄🔗

DeepSeek valued $50B+ after state‑backed round 🐉🔗

Skild AI crosses $14B+ valuation on robotics push 🤖🔗

POLICY

California Assembly schedules hearing on AI training data copyright ⚖️🔗

EU Horizon Europe opens €30M call for energy AI models 📜🔗

BOJ conference CFP emphasizes AI macro‑policy and data use 🏛️🔗

Juniper Research outlines governance needs for CX AI agents 📑🔗

SOVEREIGN

Canada previously committed $240M to Cohere compute build‑out 🍁🔗

China’s National AI Fund secured voting control in DeepSeek 🏛️🔗

Saudi, Singapore funds circling future Anthropic megafundraise 💼🔗

Alphabet effectively taps public markets as quasi‑sovereign AI funder 🏦🔗

SECTORS

Telecom deployed multi‑agent LTM platform for autonomous operations 📶🔗

Banking deployed agentic AI for credit and risk workflows 🏦🔗

Insurance and CX deployed AI agents to finish customer journeys 📨🔗

Cloud observability deployed AI agents to manage telemetry ☁️🔗

SME enablement deployed agentic AI training for 1,000+ Singapore firms 🏙️🔗

COMMUNITY MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Mukund Jha scaled Emergent to $10M ARR in two months 🌐🔗