AI inference startup Baseten has reportedly raised $1.5 billion months after its latest mega round

AI inference company Baseten is close to closing a stunning $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation, the Wall Street Journal reports. Just five months ago, the startup announced it had raised a $300 million Series E at a valuation of $5 billion. 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 Wall Street Journal reported that this is a split-priced round, a tactic used by startups to boost their headline valuation and make lead investors look good on paper. Sources told the newspaper that some investors in this latest financing round will receive a valuation of $13 billion, while the valuation of others reaches $11 billion. The deal is said to be jointly led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital and Wellington Management.

Launched in 2019, Baseten is a startup capitalizing on what The Next Wave has hailed as a “heuristics gold rush,” where venture capital is pouring huge sums of money into companies building the inference layer. Inference is what the model does after a user submits a prompt. Baseten promises to handle inference quickly while controlling costs by directing requests to the best model for the task, especially to competent and less expensive open source alternatives.