AI inference startup Baseten is reportedly on the verge of closing a massive $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The raise comes just five months after the company announced a $300 million Series E at a $5 billion valuation, and only 14 months after closing a $150 million Series D. If completed at the reported terms, the deal would represent a 160% jump in valuation in under six months—a striking trajectory for a company that was founded in 2019.
However, the round is structured as a split-priced financing, a strategy startups increasingly use to inflate headline valuations while offering different terms to different investors. According to sources cited by the Journal, some participants are coming in at the $13 billion mark, while others are pricing their investments at $11 billion. The round is said to be co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Wellington Management.
Baseten has positioned itself at the center of what some investors are calling the "inference gold rush"—the race to build infrastructure for the stage of AI deployment that occurs after a user submits a prompt. The company pitches itself as a cost-control solution, routing inference requests to the best-suited model, including capable open-source alternatives that can undercut premium offerings on price. The approach appears to be resonating with venture capital at a moment when AI infrastructure spending has become one of the hottest categories in tech investing.
The deal underscores the extraordinary pace of capital flowing into AI infrastructure startups, even as the broader market wrestles with questions about valuations and sustainability. Baseten's three consecutive mega-rounds in roughly 14 months stand out even in a sector where billion-dollar raises have become routine, signaling that major institutional investors remain willing to pay premium prices for exposure to the inference layer of the AI stack.