AI inference company Baseten is nearing completion of an impressive $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation. reports the WSJ. Just five months ago, the startup announced that it had raised a $300 million Series E with a valuation of 5 billion dollars. And that round was just nine months after raising a $150 million Series D.
If completed, this latest round would represent a 160% increase in valuation in less than half a year. However, the WSJ reports that it is a split price rounda tactic that startups are using to increase their overall valuation and make lead investors look good on paper. Some investors in this latest funding round will reportedly fetch a valuation of $13 billion, while others at $11 billion, sources told the Journal. This deal is said to be co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital and Wellington Management.
Launched in 2019, Baseten is a startup that benefits from what The Next Wave hailed as “gold rush by inference” in which venture capitalists are investing huge amounts of money in companies building the inference layer. Inference is what the model does after a user sends a message. Baseten promises to handle inference quickly while controlling costs by routing requests to the best model for the task, especially to competent and less expensive open source alternatives.
