Fireworks.ai Valued at $17.5B: Long-Term Inference Cost Decline vs. Short-Term Bubble Risk

Fireworks AI raised new funding at a $17.5 billion valuation, with Nvidia continuing to double down. This number reminds me of the market frenzy over AI inference infrastructure at the end of 2025—back then, everyone was still debating whether "inference costs could drop to 1/10th of training costs." Now Fireworks has directly provided the answer: yes, and the market is willing to pay for it.