Fal, a San Francisco start-up that hosts and runs AI video, image and audio models, raised $1.3 billion in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Nvidia, Sound Ventures and T. Rowe Price. According to Bloomberg, cited by TechCrunch, the valuation is $16 billion, double the $8 billion of April.
The company announced its Series E and F together, with a combined $1.65 billion (Sequoia led the earlier round). According to Bloomberg, Fal passed $800 million in annualized revenue earlier this year, amid demand for inference services, especially from customers using open models.
Rivals such as Baseten, Fireworks AI and Modal are also growing fast and raising at higher valuations. According to TechCrunch, their gross margins remain thin because of the high cost of buying or leasing compute. Fal was founded in 2021 by Burkay Gur, a former machine learning leader at Coinbase, and Gorkem Yurtseven, a former Amazon developer.