Fal.ai Reaches Unicorn Status—How is the Startup Ecosystem of Türkiye?

“This decade is the age of AI; this decade is where technology is peaking.” These are the sentences we hear quite frequently, but not many people suggest the rapid growth of businesses and large- and small-scale companies. It is rare to find someone who prioritizes business impact over technological advancements, even though it is these very advancements that help establish new companies.

Türkiye is generally not perceived as a hub of technology or business development, as there are fewer companies that managed to create a place for themselves in the global scope. Yet, some great minds do come and go; innovative ideas and improved technologies make the country more enhanced day by day.

There are some failed or successful start-ups initiated by Turkish enterprisers too. For example, Martı—which started as an electric scooter renting app in 2018 and now has more features and is the leading mobility platform of Türkiye—has expanded its market to many more countries like the United States after generating a strong revenue in Istanbul.

Another company that is powered by artificial intelligence, Fal.ai, is a generative media platform founded by Turkish entrepreneurs. They gather generative image, video, and audio models, all in one place, and develop and fine-tune models with serverless GPUs and on-demand clusters. It was established in 2021 by Burkay Gür and Görkem Yurtseven in San Francisco.

As a San Francisco-based tech business, they have reached a new status as a business these days: being a unicorn. A unicorn firm is one that has a market value higher than 1 billion dollars, and with the new investment round under the lead of Meritech Capital, the company's valuation reached $1.5 billion.

This way, Fal.ai has secured its spot among the other few Turkish unicorns, including Getir, Peak Games, Papara, and Trendyol.

The first unicorn company of Türkiye, Peak Games, became one in 2020, just five years ago, and now there are 8 firms that have a valuation this big. In such a small time, in only half a decade, it is definitely a huge success. An important point is that almost every Turkish unicorn was founded after 2010, showcasing that most of them are newly evolved.

A key question is what may have sparked this growth? The answer might be about the strategic environment of nurturing of the start-up ecosystem over the last few years; government initiatives have also aimed to foster innovation. As remarkable data, from 2020 to 2023, local technology start-ups have received 4 billion United States dollars worth of investments from both local and global investors, which have critically accelerated the unicorns mostly based in Istanbul.

In a speech, the Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kaçır said, “We will make sure that 100,000 technology start-ups are born in Türkiye, and 100 of them will exceed 1 billion in value to become unicorns by 2030,” proving the hopes of enhancing the startup environment in Türkiye.

The company is now planning to use these investments to hasten the product development stages and expand the team and their reach on a global scale. Burkay Gür said that “This investment is not only a sign of trust in our technology and vision but also a sign of belief in the transformative potential of generative AI in the media industry. With the powerful tools we offer developers, we are making media production more accessible and flexible.”

In conclusion, in the realm of artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship, Fal.ai reaching such a status among the technology giants is something to be considered as a win for both our country and the world in general. With young minds to spark such innovative ideas and companies, the future may be brighter than what we think, especially for Türkiye.

Edited by: Ömer Gökce