Founded in 2016 by Krish Ramineni and Sam Udotong, this is a remote positioned startup, now a Unicorn, that offers an AI-powered meeting assistant which can record, transcribe and summarise voice conversations across platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and more.
Built for Remote Teams, by a Remote Team
Fireflies.ai has no physical headquarters. Its globally distributed team of 120 employees spans continents and time zones, with employees working from over 40+ cities worldwide The note-taking solutions provider for virtual meetings serves users across 500,000 companies, including three out of five unicorn companies in India.
In June 2025, Fireflies.ai completed its first tender offer, which granted early employees liquidity and pushed its private valuation past the $1 billion mark, officially earning unicorn status. Co-founder and CEO, Krish Ramineni stated that “We wanted to recognize our earliest employees who’ve been vital to Fireflies’ journey,” and also mentioned that this was a “conservative market valuation” and that it “would be much higher” if they had sought a traditional fundraising round. Fireflies has remained profitable since 2023, maintaining strong triple-digit year-over-year growth.
The company raised $5 million in its seed funding round in 2019, led by Canaan Partners, and then a Series A funding raised $14 million in 2021, and this was led by Khosla Ventures, with ongoing participation from Canaan Partners. This brought their total funding to approximately $19 million since inception.
Alongside its unicorn milestone, in the same month, Fireflies.ai, in a tie up with Gen AI company Perplexity, introduced “Talk to Fireflies”, an interactive voice/text AI companion that taps into Perplexity’s real-time web search during meetings. This integration turns Fireflies into a knowledgeable teammate, enabling fact-checks, research and quick insights in real time. People can ask questions like “Hey fireflies, list top competitors in contract manufacturing”, without exiting the meeting window.
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The poetic aspect of Fireflies.ai’s AI meeting assistant lies in the fact that it can seamlessly support the very work culture its creators help build. As both the company’s flagship product and its most valuable internal asset, it plays a dual role, streamlining operations while exemplifying the power of its own technology. This synergy hence enhances productivity and propels the company toward sustained leadership in its space. The company’s growth is the biggest marketing catalyst for its product!
No headquarters. No aggressive fundraising. Just a strong product, a global remote team and a clear focus on efficiency. With its $1 billion valuation now official and a game-changing partnership with Perplexity in play, Fireflies is transforming the digital landscape one meeting at a time.
Written by Teertha Ravi
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