AI inference startup Baseten reportedly raising $1.5B months after its last mega-round
AI inference company Baseten is about to close a stunning $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation. reports the Wall Street Journal. Just five months ago, the startup announced that it had raised funding $300 million Series E at a valuation of $5 billion. And that round was just nine months after raising a $150 million Series D.
If completed, this latest round would represent a 160% valuation increase in less than half a year. However, the WSJ reports that this is a split-priced round, a tactic startups use to boost their overall valuation and make lead investors look good on paper. Some investors in this latest round of funding are reportedly pegged at a valuation of $13 billion, while others are pegged at $11 billion, sources told the Journal. This deal is reportedly co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital and Wellington Management.
Launched in 2019, Baseten is a startup that takes advantage of what The Next Wave calls the “inference gold rush” in which VCs are pouring huge amounts of money into companies building the inference layer. Inference is what the model does after a user submits a prompt. Baseten promises to handle inference quickly while controlling costs by routing requests to the model best for the job, especially to competent, less expensive open source alternatives.
