The Data Exchange with Ben Lorica The Practical Realities of AI Development
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May 8, 2025 
Lin Qiao, CEO and co-founder of Fireworks AI, shares insights from his journey in AI development. He discusses the challenges of user experience and system engineering in real-world applications. Key topics include the shift towards agentic workflows, the confluence of open-source and proprietary models, and strategies for balancing quality, speed, and cost. Lin also highlights how diverse demographics are shaping generative AI adoption, while addressing the nuances of selecting and fine-tuning AI models for optimal performance.
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Fireworks AI's Rapid Growth
- Fireworks AI grew its developer base by 18 times and revenue by 30 times in one year.
- They process over two trillion tokens per day, showing high scale and impact.
Shrinking Gap Open vs Proprietary
- The gap between open-source and proprietary models has shrunk significantly this year.
- This enables developers to start AI projects easily without deep AI expertise and achieve good results.
Use Reasoning Models Wisely
- Developers should use reasoning models for complex planning tasks in agents.
- Routing prompts to appropriate models (reasoning or conversational) improves efficiency.