Your AI product is easy to copy. Your data is not.
Lin Qiao is co-founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, which raised about $1.5 billion in July 2026 at a $17.5 billion valuation. She tells Brian Sozzi why building on a general-purpose model is not a business anyone can defend, why someone can use a coding agent to copy almost any product built on a shared API, and why she thinks the lasting asset is a company’s own data and customer feedback. She also says AI agents are only as smart as the data behind them, and that computing will move toward cheap energy rather than toward users. Fireworks sells the customization she argues for, so her claims about its value are her own.
Timestamps
0:00 The gap between Silicon Valley and everyone else
1:40 Why seven people started the company together
2:49 Why a general-purpose model is not something you can defend
4:17 Finding customers and then running out of money
6:17 How smart AI agents actually are
8:54 What knowledge workers do next
10:28 Why she does not believe in the fifty-person company
12:34 Building trust, and what people said about television
15:03 The shortage nobody planned for
17:26 Why the cheapest model can cost the most to run
19:17 Why data centers may move away from you
21:33 Where the company goes next
#AI #Agents #PowerPlayers #YahooFinance
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