Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting platform used by 75% of Fortune 500 companies, has officially joined the unicorn club, reaching a $1 billion valuation, according to a company news release. The milestone coincides with the launch of “Talk to Fireflies,” a voice-activated assistant built with AI answer engine Perplexity to bring real-time web search directly into virtual meetings.
Founded by Nigerian-American aerospace engineer Sam Udotong and former Microsoft employee Krish Ramineni, as People of Color in Tech mentions, Fireflies has scaled rapidly without relying on traditional venture funding.
Instead of raising another round, the company completed its first tender offer, allowing early employees to cash out some equity while keeping the firm’s cap table intact. Fireflies has been profitable since 2023 and hasn’t raised new capital since 2021, all while posting triple-digit annual growth, as the release states.
“We wanted to recognize our earliest employees who’ve been vital to Fireflies’ journey,” CEO Ramineni said in a statement. “Reaching this significant valuation milestone while remaining profitable validates our approach to building an AI company differently from the conventional ‘raise big, burn fast’ playbook. This coincides with a larger product evolution that will change how people experience meetings.”
According to the release, Fireflies’ active user base has grown eightfold over the past 18 months, now serving more than 20 million users across 500,000 organizations worldwide. Its appeal lies in simplifying workplace meetings: With “Talk to Fireflies,” users can say “Hey Fireflies” or type “/ff” in Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams to ask questions like, “What key decisions have we made so far?” or “What are the latest AI assistant trends?” Answers appear instantly, backed by real-time citations from Perplexity’s search engine.
To encourage adoption, Fireflies and Perplexity are offering free premium-plan upgrades for eligible users through their dashboards and the Perplexity Perks Program. It’s part of a broader roadmap that includes AI voice agents capable of attending meetings on users’ behalf and smarter search capacity across past conversations — moving Fireflies closer to becoming a full-scale knowledge hub.
