Fal, a generative media platform for developers, was named with thoughtful duality.
At first glance, Fal stands for “features and labels,” a machine learning term referring to input data and the answers a model learns to generate. But there’s another layer—Fal is also a Turkish term for “fortune telling,” the startup’s cofounders Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven tell me.
“It’s a good Easter Egg that’s there,” said Gur. “We have a lot of Turkish employees, and it’s fun when they notice.”
Gur and Yurtseven, both originally from Turkey, first connected in the early 2010s in San Francisco. They both worked in AI and machine learning at tech companies—Yurtseven was at Amazon, while Gur was at Oracle then Coinbase—and became longtime friends. In the dead of COVID-19, the two were in the same “bubble” in Palm Springs, talking about AI. They founded Fal in 2021, looking to provide developers with the platform and acumen to more readily use generative AI models for image and video generation.
“We made an early bet to position ourselves as just focusing on generative media as opposed to many others who were very excited about LLMs,” Gur told Fortune. “We basically left the LLMs behind, and specialized in image, video, and audio-type models.”
The company’s been in the midst of rapid “make sure hands and feet are inside the vehicle” growth and now has 22 employees. Only four months after announcing its Series A, the startup has reached a new milestone: Fal has raised a $49 million Series B, Fortune can exclusively report. Notable Capital led the round with Andreessen Horowitz, while Bessemer Venture Partners, Kindred Ventures, and First Round Capital participated. With the deal, a16z general partner Jennifer Li and Notable Capital managing partner Glenn Solomon will join Fal’s board.
If you’re new to generative AI for images and videos, the most important thing you should know is this: Using these models can feel infinite. You can rapidly generate impossible videos and images, from golden astronauts in space to penguins playing instruments. And while this sounds aesthetically cool but fundamentally abstract (a framework generative images have run into in the past), what Gur and Yurtseven are seeing is that businesses are starting to actively want to use this tech. Fal currently serves north of 50 enterprises, including Quora, Perplexity, and Canva. (Perplexity CEO and cofounder Aravind Srinivas is a Fal investor. Fortune has a business partnership with Perplexity.)
The use cases are both legion and specific, with some startups building applications on the platform while other companies are focusing on AI-generated avatars for training and education. Design super-unicorn Canva has been using Fal as it develops and integrates its AI-powered editing tools.
“The use cases are very broad, much broader than I think I initially expected,” said Dan Cahana, investor at Notable Capital. “You play with these models, and it’s fun. You send them to your family, and you blow your grandparents’ minds with it. But as you spend more and more time, you realize: This totally changes photo editing, architectural design, fashion design, all sorts of creative pursuits, where the time from imagination to execution can take a while. Here, you can shorten that pretty dramatically.”
There’s also a world of indie developers experimenting with Fal, now more than one million. And that developer community is key to Fal’s present, future, and opportunity moving forward. But the developer world Fal is serving extends beyond traditional software engineers to creatives, said Steve Jang, founder and managing partner at Kindred Ventures.
“There’s a community globally, and I’d say it’s hundreds of millions of creators, artists, and designers that are working with media today,” said Jang, who led Fal’s Series A. “That eclipses the number of software developers, for example…I think, ultimately, generative media, over the next ten years, represents a multitrillion-dollar opportunity.”
In quick succession, generative media has grown increasingly competitive—think: Runway, Synthesia, and OpenAI’s Sora and DALL-E—and, as a sector, faces copyright concerns. But generative media is clearly growing as AI evolves, and Fal occupies an interesting spot, working across the space with open and closed source models. The company is setting itself up to meet an expanding opportunity. Yurtseven said that the startup’s “current GPU fleet is in the 1000s, and we expect this year to get to the tens of 1000s of GPUs.” Yurtseven, Gur, Jang, and Cahana all seemingly feel that 2025 is shaping up to be a defining year for generative media.
“This is something that’s going to be in our lives, and something every company is going to have to invest in,” said Yurtseven. “This is a real emerging industry, and it’s going to change a lot this year.”
What those changes will look like, we have some idea. But with boundless possibilities, there are also unknowns you have to be ready to meet. And that’s where the dual-meaning of Fal’s name becomes especially fitting. Generative AI and fortune-telling (different as they are) are both engaged with something fundamental—our drive to explore, to test ideas and wrestle with them, and to find the boundaries of our own ideas and lives.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- Harrison.ai, a Haymarket, Australia-based AI-powered medical diagnostics company, raised $112 million in Series C funding. Aware Super, ECP, and existing investor Horizons Ventures led the round and were joined by National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, Ord Minnett, Wollemi Capital Group, and existing investors Blackbird Ventures and Alpha JWC Ventures.
- Sardine, a San Francisco-based AI-powered fraud prevention, compliance, and credit underwriting platform, raised $70 million in Series C funding. Activant Capital led the round and was joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Nyca Partners, Google Ventures, and others.
- ANA, a Henderson, Nev.-based mobile power products company, raised $50 million in funding from S2G Investments.
- Moderne, a Miami-based code refactoring automation platform, raised $30 million in Series B funding. Acrew Capital led the round and was joined by Morgan Stanley, Amex Ventures, TIAA Ventures, and existing investors Allstate, Intel Capital, Mango Capital, and True Ventures.
- Positron, a Reno-based AI inference technology developer, raised $23.5 million in funding from Flume Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, and Resilience Reserve.
- Comulate, a San Francisco-based accounting automation services provider for the insurance industry, raised $20 million in Series B funding. BOND and Workday Ventures led the round and were joined by existing investors Spark Capital, Jonathan Crystal, Zach Perret, and Qasar Younis.
- ConverzAI, a Seattle-based AI-powered recruitment solutions provider, raised $16 million in Series A funding. Menlo Ventures led the round and was joined by Left Lane Capital and existing investors Foundation Capital and Afore Capital.
- Plain, a San Francisco-based AI-powered customer support tools developer, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Battery Ventures led the round and was joined by existing investors Index Ventures and Connect Ventures.
- ScorePlay, a New York City-based AI-powered sports media management platform, raised $13 million in Series A funding. 20VC led the round and was joined by Seven Seven Six, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Alex Morgan, and Nico Rosberg.
- Reanest, a Lagos-based multi-currency financial platform, raised $11 million in Series A funding. QED led the round and was joined by Norrsken22.
- PHȲND, a Stamford, Conn.-based free gaming platform, raised $10 million in seed funding. Wellington Management led the round and was joined by Bessemer Venture Partners, Connecticut Innovations Fund, and Jozy Altidore.
- Fifteenth, a San Francisco-based tax solution provider for the tech industry, raised $8.3 million in seed funding. A* and General Catalyst led the round and were joined by SV Angel and angel investors.
- Affinity Africa, a Ghana-based financial services provider for micro, small, and medium enterprises, raised $8 million in seed funding. Grazia Equity and BACKED VC led the round and was joined by Enza Capital, Launch Africa, Renew Capital, existing investor Eldon Capital, angel investors, and others.
- MarketLeap, a Luxembourg-based AI-powered direct-to-consumer e-commerce scaling platform, raised $8 million in Series A funding. Smedvig Ventures led the round and was joined by Expon Capital, Motier Ventures, and angel investors.
- Pinkfish AI, a San Francisco-based AI automation platform for enterprises, raised $7.6 million in pre-seed funding. Norwest Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Storm Ventures and angel investors.
- Taager, a Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based social e-commerce business platform, raised $6.8 million in pre-Series B funding. Norrsken22 led the round and was joined by Endeavor Catalyst, Beltone VC, and all existing investors.
- Era, a New York City-based AI-powered personal finance platform, raised $6.2 million in seed funding. MaC Venture Capital, Third Kind Venture Capital, and Protagonist led the round and were joined by Clocktower Ventures, K5 Ventures, and Northzone.
- Coral, a Montreal-based women’s health digital platform, raised $4.1 million CAD ($2.9 million) in seed funding. Brightspark led the round and was joined by Diagram, The51, and angel investors.
- Arcube, a Manchester, England-based post-flight loyalty platform, raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Fuel Ventures and Oxford Capital Partners led the round and were joined by others.
- Gaia Dynamics, a Miami-based AI-powered global trade compliance platform, raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding from Andrew Ng’s AI Fund and Zenda VC.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Iris TeleHealth, a portfolio company of Concord Health Partners, acquired innovaTel, an Erie, Pa.-based telepsychiatry services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- NeuroFlow, a portfolio company of Concord Health Partners, acquired Quartet Health, a New York City-based behavioral healthcare services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
- Nautic Partners acquired Proud Moments, a New York City-based applied behavioral analysis therapy provider for children with autism, from Audax Private Equity. Financial terms were not disclosed.
OTHER
- Drata agreed to acquire SafeBase, a San Francisco-based automated security review platform, for $250 million.
- LegalZoom acquired Formation Nation, a Las Vegas and Reno-based business formation and growth services provider, for $49.3 million in cash and approximately 2.2 million restricted shares of the company’s common stock.
- Mint House acquired Locale, an Austin-based apartments and apartment-hotels portfolio manager. Financial terms were not disclosed.
IPOS
- SailPoint, an Austin-based identity security solutions provider for enterprises, plans to raise $1.2 billion in an offering of 50 million shares (5% secondary) priced between $21 and $23 on the Nasdaq. The company posted $824 million in revenue for the year ending Oct. 31, 2024. Thoma Bravo backs the company.
- Kestra Medical Technologies, a Kirkland, Wash.-based wearable cardiac device developer, filed to go public on the Nasdaq. The company posted $46 million in sales for the year ending Oct. 31, 2024. Bain Capital and Endeavor Vision back the company.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- Northrim Horizon, a Mesa, Ariz.-based investment firm, raised $235 million for its third fund focused on business, consumer, healthcare, software, and tech-enabled services.