“If you’re not one step ahead, you’re already behind.” I sat down with @FAL co-founders @burkaygur + @isidentical to talk infra as a moat, AI video’s ChatGPT moment, and what’s powering the next wave of generative media. Some key takeaways from the episode (link in comment):

Today is a great day for the creatives. 🎨 Congrats @figma @FAL

Seriously... Thank you @liangsays, @humford & @eriktorenberg and team. It is incredible seeing you guys ship.

Media house in order with the one and only 👇🏻

I don’t usually get emotional about milestones, but today feels special. We've just raised our $125M Series C - our third funding round in the past 12 months. In this short time, we've grown from serving just a few hundred customers to empowering millions of developers. We've gone from barely making revenue to surpassing a $90M annualized run rate, all thanks to a core team of dedicated individuals This success didn’t come by luck; it was built on relentless effort, countless hours of hard work, and a brilliant team that's committed to excellence every single day. I'm incredibly proud of every member of this team, and I can't thank them enough for making this journey possible. There is no way I could have guessed we would have come this far this fast when @burkaygur called me and said he is starting a company about ML infrastructure. It was the best decision in my life to join him and @gorkemyurt and be part of this amazing team from the start. We are still early in our journey, and if you’d like to come and be part of this amazing company & apply below

Alongside @MeritechCapital, we’d love to thank all our existing and new investors joining this round: Sameer Dholakia (@spdholakia) and Talia Goldberg (@TaliaGold) from @BessemerVP, Jennifer Li (@JenniferHli) from @a16z, Steve Jang (@stevejang) from @KindredVentures, Glenn Solomon (@glennsolomon) and Dan Cahana (@dan_cahana) from @notable_cap, Emily Zhao (@emilyyzhao) from @SalesforceVC, Jane Lee (@leejane09) from @Shopify Ventures, Nick Landolfi from @Unusual_VC, Todd Jackson (@tjack) from @FirstRound and Anne Dwane (@adwane) from @VillageGlobal

Today, we're thrilled to announce our $125M Series C funding round at a $1.5B valuation, led by Meritech Capital, marking our third successful raise in just 12 months! fal’s Generative Media Cloud now powers tens of thousands of applications, supporting over two million developers and more than 300 enterprise customers. From initial prototypes to fully scaled production, we've become the essential infrastructure enabling some of the most innovative and creative work in the industry. Over the past year alone, we've experienced extraordinary growth—averaging 40% month-over-month, consistently exceeding our own ambitious projections. Each month, hundreds of thousands of new developers and thousands of fresh applications join our platform, unlocking entirely new use cases previously thought impossible. With this latest round of funding, we're significantly scaling our engineering, support, sales, and marketing teams to keep pace with the accelerating demand and enthusiasm from our community. Our vision has always been clear: build a generative media platform that effortlessly creates dynamic, real-time content across video, audio, image, and 3D. Thanks to our incredible team, dedicated partners, and visionary customers, that's precisely what fal delivers today—empowering creativity at unprecedented scale.

This is unbelievable. Queen!!

Funny how AI convos always come with timestamps: “2 years after ChatGPT” or “pre-SDXL era.” They’re not just time markers, they're mental version controls. Your worldview depends heavily on when you downloaded it.

That was an epic hat exchange to give the “GPU Rich” hat to the father of GPUs. @burkaygur @FAL