AI inference company Baseten is nearing the completion of a staggering $1.5 billion funding round at a valuation of $13 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. Just five months ago, the startup announced it had raised $300 million in Series E funding at a valuation of $5 billion. And that round comes just nine months after raising $150 million in Series D.
If this latest round goes through, it would increase the company’s valuation by 160% within six months. However, the WSJ reports that this is a split-price round, a tactic used by startups to boost their headline valuations and look good on paper to their lead investors. This latest round of funding includes some investors with a valuation of $13 billion, while others have a valuation of $11 billion, people told the Journal. The deal is said to be co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital and Wellington Management.
Founded in 2019, Baseten is a startup benefiting from the “inference gold rush” hailed by The Next Wave. In this gold rush, VCs are pouring huge amounts of money into companies building inference layers. Inference is what the model does after the user submits a prompt. Baseten promises to speed up inference while controlling costs by routing requests to the best model for the task, especially capable and inexpensive open source alternatives.
