Baseten, an AI inference startup, is close to finalising a $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal, just five months after raising a $300 million Series E at a $5 billion valuation. The deal is reportedly co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Wellington Management, and structured as a split-priced round with some investors entering at $13 billion and others at $11 billion.
Founded in 2019, Baseten sits at the centre of a surge of investor interest in AI inference infrastructure. The company handles the computational layer that processes model outputs after a user submits a prompt, routing requests to the most cost-effective model available, including open source alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic. The approach is designed to reduce inference costs while maintaining performance, an increasingly attractive proposition as enterprise AI spending comes under scrutiny.
