As inference demand surges, Fireworks and Fal consider launching a new round of financing.

Startups like Fal and Fireworks AI, which provide AI model and server invocation services, are seeing continuously rising revenue. Developers use them to run models quickly, which has also triggered a new wave of investor enthusiasm. According to two people familiar with the matter, Fal, which focuses on providing inference services for image and video generation models such as Google's Nano Banana, has held talks with investors about a new funding round at a target valuation of $15 billion. A third person familiar with the matter said the negotiations are still at an early stage and the company may raise its target valuation to a range of $17 billion to $20 billion. The third person said Fireworks AI, the top inference service provider by revenue scale, is also considering a new funding round, and if it proceeds, the target valuation could reach $30 billion, nearly double the previous round's valuation announced in July. Fireworks said on Friday that the company has completed an employee share sale led by Atlas Capital, at a valuation of $17.5 billion, in line with the previous funding round's valuation announced in July. According to reports, another inference service provider, Baseten, is also in talks with investors about a new funding round at a target valuation of $26 billion; peer service provider Modal is in funding talks at a valuation of about $15 billion, roughly three times its valuation from a funding round four months ago.