Latest news with #Fireflies'
Business Wire
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Fireflies Reaches $1 Billion Valuation, Partners With Perplexity to Bring Real-time Web Search to Meetings
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- the #1 AI teammate for meetings used by people at 75% of Fortune 500 companies, today announced it has reached a valuation of over $1 billion following its first tender offer. The company also unveiled a strategic partnership with Perplexity to bring voice-activated, real-time web search capabilities to meetings through "Talk to Fireflies," enabling users to access the world's knowledge without leaving their conversations. "By integrating Perplexity's search capabilities into Fireflies, we're eliminating the need to switch contexts or postpone decisions as workers move to question-first problem-solving." - Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer at Perplexity Share The tender offer provides liquidity to early team members who have been with the company for years, reflecting Fireflies' commitment to rewarding those instrumental in building the company. This milestone comes as Fireflies maintains profitability since 2023—a rarity among AI startups—while sustaining triple-digit year-over-year growth without raising primary capital since 2021. "We wanted to recognize our earliest employees who've been vital to Fireflies' journey," said Krish Ramineni, CEO and co-founder of "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." Fireflies has quietly become one of the fastest-growing productivity platforms, serving 20 million people across more than 500,000 organizations globally. Over the past 18 months, user growth has surged 8x, driven by demand for AI tools that streamline meetings, automate workflows, and unlock institutional knowledge. Talk to Fireflies: transforming the meeting experience With today's launch of "Talk to Fireflies," Fireflies becomes an interactive AI meeting companion that users can engage with via voice ("Hey Fireflies!") or text ("/ff") during meetings—in over 60 languages. In a first-of-its-kind partnership, Fireflies has integrated Perplexity's web search capabilities, allowing users to ask questions and get real-time answers sourced from the internet—all without leaving their meeting. "At Perplexity, we're focused on bringing accurate, real-time answers to people wherever and whenever they're making decisions," said Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer at Perplexity. "Meetings are where critical decisions happen, but they're often information-poor environments. By integrating Perplexity's search capabilities into Fireflies, we're eliminating the need to switch contexts or postpone decisions as workers move to question-first problem-solving." Unlike features restricted to paid tiers or specific platforms, "Talk to Fireflies" with Perplexity search is available to all Fireflies users—including those on free plans—and works seamlessly across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. 'Talk to Fireflies lets people search the web in real-time and get answers about the current meeting. For example, a late joiner can ask, 'Hey Fireflies, what key decisions have been made so far?' or a team can find information by asking, 'Hey Fireflies, what are the market growth projections for AI meeting agents?',' said Ramineni. 'This turns Fireflies into your most knowledgeable teammate.' The feature enables practical use cases such as: Special offers for customers As part of the partnership, Fireflies customers on Pro and Business plans can sign up to receive one year of Perplexity Pro at no cost, while Enterprise customers can get three months of Perplexity Enterprise Pro free. Likewise, Perplexity Pro customers can receive three months of Fireflies Business, and Perplexity Enterprise Pro customers can get three months of Fireflies Enterprise. Fireflies customers will have access to these offers within their user dashboard, while Perplexity customers will be able to access these offers via the Perplexity Perks Program. Both companies' existing customers can also look for the offers via email. Looking ahead Fireflies plans to conduct more regular tender offers moving forward, prioritizing active team members and reinforcing a long-term ownership mindset within the company. The company is also building toward a new era of intelligent meeting automation, including AI voice agents that can attend meetings entirely on a user's behalf and enhanced "Talk to Fireflies" capabilities, like the ability to search across a user's entire meeting database in the future. These agentic capabilities mark the next chapter in Fireflies' evolution—transforming how modern teams collaborate, decide, and execute. Availability "Talk to Fireflies" with Perplexity's web search is available to all Fireflies customers as of today. Users can activate the feature in Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings by saying "Hey Fireflies" or typing "/ff" in the meeting chat. Expand About helps millions of people unlock the knowledge buried inside conversations every day. Serving 20+ million people and 500,000+ organizations, Fireflies has processed over 2 billion meeting minutes with users at 75% of Fortune 500 companies. The platform provides enterprise-grade security with private storage options and never uses customer meeting data to train its AI models. Backed by Khosla Ventures and Canaan Partners, is a remote-first, global organization employing 100 people across 20+ countries. For more information, visit About Perplexity Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that draws from credible sources in real time to accurately answer questions with in-line citations, perform deep research, and more. Founded in 2022, the company's mission is to serve the world's curiosity by bridging the gap between traditional search engines and AI-driven interfaces. Each week, Perplexity answers more than 150 million questions globally. Perplexity is available in the app store and online at
Time Magazine
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
How a Departure From the Video Game Reframes Joel and Ellie's Relationship in
W arning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 6 of The Last of Us Season 2. For those who were wondering what exactly went down between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the time between Seasons 1 and 2 of The Last of Us to create such a rift between them, Sunday night's episode finally provided some answers. Episode 6, the penultimate installment of Season 2, was made up almost entirely of flashbacks to those five intervening years, with the show revisiting Joel and Ellie nearly every year on Ellie's birthday. While some of these flashbacks—like their poignant visit to the museum—were pulled from The Last of Us Part II video game, the show also took some liberties with the source material that resulted in a bit of a different spin on how their relationship ultimately fractured. One pivotal scene, which took place on Ellie's 19th birthday (her final one before Joel's murder), revolved around the death of a character you hear of in the game but never actually meet: Eugene (Joe Pantoliano). We learned earlier this season from therapist Gail (Catherine O'Hara) that she and Eugene were married for 41 years prior to his passing and that she was still pretty upset with Joel for the way he died, even if it was unavoidable. "You shot and killed my husband. You killed Eugene. And I resent you for it," she told Joel in the Season 2 premiere. "No, maybe a little more than that. I hate you for it. I hate you for it. And yes, I know you had no choice. I know that. I know I should forgive you. Well, I've tried, and I can't. Because of how you did it." This sets up a pretty big departure from the game, in which a conversation between Ellie and Dina (played in the show by Isabela Merced) reveals that Eugene simply died from a stroke. The gist of what players learn about him beyond that is that he was once a member of the Fireflies who left the militia group because he grew "tired of killing people" and that he had become Jackson's resident marijuana farmer. Some of these details were kept the same in the show, but his end was much less peaceful. "I get excited when I see these opportunities,' series co-creator Neil Druckmann told Variety of the changes. "I'm like, 'Oh, I don't know Eugene that well!' The story we told [in the game] was somewhat superficial. The way this character comes in really gets to the heart of Joel and Ellie and their relationship." As we see play out in Episode 6, by the time Ellie was turning 19, she had already been pulling away from Joel for some time, as she had begun to suspect he had lied about everything that went down at the Fireflies' Salt Lake City compound. On the morning of her birthday, we saw her practicing asking him to finally tell her the truth about what had happened. However, she was interrupted by Joel showing up to take her on her first patrol around Jackson. Although Joel clearly thought the patrol would be uneventful, they ended up being called on to provide backup for an infected attack. But when they arrived on the scene, all they found was Eugene, who had been bitten in the fray. Eugene knew he was done for but wanted to be brought back to Jackson's gate so he and Gail could say their goodbyes. Joel initially refused, but Ellie eventually convinced him—or so she thought—that Eugene had enough time left before turning to fulfill his last wish. After telling Ellie to go on ahead and promising her he would follow with Eugene, Joel instead led Eugene to the lakefront and shot him in the head. When they returned to Jackson with Eugene's body, Joel tried to lie to Gail about what happened, telling her Eugene had bravely ended his own life after being bitten so as not to put anyone in danger. However, an angry Ellie then chimed to tell Gail that was all a lie and revealed what Joel had really done. Nine months later, on the night before Joel's death, this led to a confrontation between Joel and Ellie during which she finally learned the truth about what he did to save her from the Fireflies. Although Ellie initially lashed out at him for taking away her life's purpose, the conversation ended with Ellie tearfully saying that she wanted to try to forgive him. It was a moment that recontextualized Ellie's anguish over seeing Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) kill Joel the following day and helped explain why she's now on such a revenge warpath.
Extra.ie
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Kaitlyn Dever filmed pivotal The Last of Us scene weeks after losing her mother
Warning – Season 2 Episode 2 spoilers ahead… The Last Of Us star Kaitlyn Dever has shared her grief at that shocking scene in season two. Season 2, episode 2 of the hit HBO series had fans flocking to social media in their droves, with many distraught by one particularly heartbreaking moment. Taking place five years after the events of the season 1 finale, the new season sees Abby leading the last of the Fireflies in search of Joel, played by Pedro Pascal. The Last Of Us star Kaitlyn Dever has shared her grief at that shocking season two scene. Pic:In the climactic episode, Abby finally confronts Joel about the murders at the Fireflies' base and, in a heart-wrenching moment, kills him while Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, watches. Chatting with Entertainment Weekly, Dever opened up about filming the traumatic scene both as an actor and a fan of the show. 'I watched you guys in season 1, and your relationship was so beautiful. And watching the end of you guys was really, really hard for me, as a viewer,' she began. 'It was just a massive scene emotionally, and with blocking, too. There were so many moving parts and so many things to navigate.' Emotions were understandably high for the star, who had lost her mother to cancer only weeks before filming the scene, with the funeral having taken place only days before production. Thankfully, the Last of Us production team accommodated her by postponing the filming of the scene to a later date and having a closed set. Season 2, episode 2 of the hit HBO series had fans flocking to social media in their droves, with many distraught by one particularly heartbreaking moment. Pic:'To be as honest as possible. I will just say that my days leading up to this scene were horrible. I lost my mom two or three weeks before I actually shot this scene, and my mom's funeral was three days before I did my first day. So I was sort of in a fog. I was in a daze. 'Because of my life circumstances, I wasn't actually able to do my normal routine as an actor, which was really interesting because I was kind of worried about it. Usually if I have a monologue like that, I'm memorizing it three weeks before I do it. I had a different approach, and I think that it really served the character in a lot of ways. I was able to sort of… I don't know, just really let it go and not think about it too much because the words on the page are so powerful anyway. Elsewhere, Pedro Pascal was praised by fans after sharing a selfie alongside Kaitlyn following the episode airing. Taking place five years after the events of the season 1 finale, the new season sees Abby leading the last of the Fireflies in search of Joel, played by Pedro Pascal. Pic: Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images Lovers of the show were quick to flood the comments with praise for the star, as they understood the hate she was about to receive for killing off such a beloved character. 'I know you posted this so there won't be any hate for Kaitlin after episode 2 because you're such a sweetheart! And don't worry, we love her,' one user wrote. 'I just hope nobody bullies Kaitlyn , she's an actress , not the character. Laura Bailey went through hell in 2020. Kaitlyn is an incredible actress and she plays Abby beautifully,' another penned. 'I dont hate the actress but I sure hope her character gets the same treatment from Eliie,' a third shared.
