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

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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 1h 17m 2 speakers 3 chapters transcribed 2 months ago
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Lin Qiao 0:00
What I don't want to see is there's only one company owns intelligence. I think that doesn't make sense to me. I think last year is the year of coding and this year is the year of co-work. I do think the cost of token will go down drastically. 10x cost reduction in the next three years. And this 10x cost reduction will drive 100x usage. We absolutely are not going to move into application layer. Very clear to us. Whether we will move down into build data centers and so on, that could always be on the table.
Harry Stebbings 0:34
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and in the hot seat today, a founder who I wrote a $10 million check for after just a 15-minute meeting, Lin Quao, founder at Fireworks. This was one of the easiest investment decisions that I've made in a 10-year investing career. Number one, the team is one of the best in the world. They've worked together for years. Number two, the inference market. It's growing insanely fast, and it will be one of the biggest markets in the world. Number three, the traction. Honestly, I get in trouble for this. Everyone's like, oh, don't say triple, triple, double, double's dead, Harry. It's because that's what they are. Well, that's the sad truth. When you can invest in fireworks, which has scaled to one billion in ARR in four years, that's what you should do.
Harry Stebbings 1:18
Number four, hiring ability. Honestly, the single best founders, they're able to hire the best in the world. Lin just hired George Hu. He was the former president of Salesforce. And then number five, upside. How much money can this make? Well, do you believe AI will be transformative to the way that we live? Do you believe we will live in a world of many models which are horizontal and specialized? If so, Fireworks, honestly, it can be a $500 billion company. I don't know about you, but this train is leaving the station. But before we dive into the show today, founders face a different set of challenges at every stage of growth. For Sid Shate, co-founder and CEO of D-Matrix, JP Morgan delivered the guidance and expertise to help navigate what came next.
Harry Stebbings 2:07
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Harry Stebbings 2:56
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Harry Stebbings 3:41
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