AI Crawler Firecrawl Raises $14.5M Expands Hiring Amid Industry Growth

Firecrawl, a developer-first AI platform focused on extracting structured, machine-readable web data, has raised $14.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke and Y Combinator. Founded in 2022, Firecrawl’s technology includes the AI-driven Fire Engine scraper, which delivers data 33% faster and with 40% higher success rates than legacy tools, and a popular open-source crawler used by over 350,000 developers, boasting nearly 50,000 stars on GitHub. The platform supports seamless integration via a lightweight API and is expanding capabilities to include natural language queries, positioning itself as a key enabler for AI applications and large language models. Firecrawl counts major clients such as OpenAI, Alibaba, Shopify, Replit, Zapier, and some of the world's largest hedge funds, and the company is already profitable. CEO Caleb Peffer recounted a memorable moment securing Nexus as an investor during a coffee meeting when he accidentally fell out of his chair, symbolizing a strong founder-investor fit. The funding will be used to accelerate growth, drive product innovation, and expand the team, particularly hiring for AI agent roles.