We are profitable; no plans to go for fresh round of funding: Fireflies.ai CEO

Fireflies.ai is used by over 30,000 organisations in India and 3 lakh organisations globally. We’ve transcribed conversations for over 16 million people so far. Our platform has evolved from being just an AI note-taker to a full-fledged AI assistant for meetings. We now do more than note-taking—it can analyse conversations, generate reports, and even write blog drafts based on meeting content. We recently launched our AI App Store, enabling more advanced functionalities.

Yes, we leverage generative AI to create blog drafts and summaries. We partner with OpenAI and Anthropic. Our relationship with OpenAI goes back to when Vinod Khosla, our investor, connected me with Sam Altman. We had early access to their models, giving us a significant head start.

 No, the summaries will vary, based on the user’s prompts and what they want from the meeting. Fireflies tailors the output to each user’s request, so it won’t be identical. Also, the meeting host controls access to the meeting’s data.

 Yes, and Fireflies also provides citations, ensuring the output remains factual, which helps avoid AI hallucinations. We’ve worked hard to ensure that the content generated is as accurate as possible.

Our team remains relatively small—about 100 employees globally, with a significant number in India. We’ve managed to maintain profitability, which is rare for AI startups. Our last funding round was three years ago, when we raised about $15 million. In total, we’ve raised about $20 million (₹165 crore) so far. Although many investors are eager for us to raise more, we’ve been able to hold off because of our profitability.

 Not in the immediate future, though we may consider it if we want to accelerate R&D or acquire other companies.

 Competition is fierce, but we’ve evolved beyond transcription into a complete meeting assistant, making Fireflies a category leader. Recently, a report ranked Fireflies as one of the top five most-purchased AI products globally, alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Midjourney. Our focus on analytics, search capabilities, and team collaboration has helped us stand out.

We’ve developed our own solutions to handle accents. Fireflies can now detect different variations of English—whether it’s Indian, Australian, or British English. Additionally, we’ve partnered with vendors to support 60 languages, including Hindi, Spanish, and French.

 Yes, if a meeting is in Hindi, Fireflies will transcribe it in Hindi. Users can then ask it to translate the content into English or another language.

Yes, we’re 100 per cent remote across 20 countries and 40 cities. India represents about 25 per cent of our headcount. Our remote model has worked well, and we plan to scale it, even if we grow to 1,000 employees.