AI inference startup Baseten reportedly raising $1.5B months after its last mega-round
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- Baseten is near finalizing a $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation, per the Wall Street Journal.
- Just five months earlier, Baseten closed a $300 million Series E at a $5 billion valuation, which itself came only nine months after a $150 million Series D.
- The new round would represent a 160% valuation jump in under six months, though the WSJ reports it's a split-priced deal — some investors entering at $13 billion while others come in at $11 billion.
- The round is co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Wellington Management.
- Founded in 2019, Baseten runs AI inference workloads by routing requests to the best-for-task model, prioritizing competent and less-expensive open source alternatives.
- The deal is part of what The Next Wave called the "inference gold rush," with VCs flooding capital into companies building the post-training inference layer.
Why it matters: The split-pricing detail is the buried caveat: the headline $13B figure flatters lead investors while other participants get in at $11B, a tactic the WSJ flags as increasingly common for inflating headline valuations. Three consecutive mega-rounds in 14 months — totaling $1.95B raised while valuation climbed from an earlier mark to $13B — underscore how concentrated VC appetite has become around the AI inference layer specifically.
