Baseten Raises $75M to Accelerate Inference Infrastructure
Baseten , a San Francisco-based AI inference platform provider, has secured $75 million in Series C funding co-led by IVP and Spark Capital , bringing its total funding to $135 million. The round values the company at $825 million and comes amid shifting focus to inference-time compute in the wake of DeepSeek R1.
Founded in 2019, Baseten has evolved into a major player in AI infrastructure. The company helps organizations deploy and scale AI models in production environments, and has grown revenue more than fivefold year-over-year while maintaining 99.999% uptime. Baseten's platform enables businesses to run inference—the process of generating outputs from AI models—across multiple cloud providers including Amazon and Google, helping customers navigate GPU shortages and achieve better performance metrics.
The company claims its clients typically see 40% lower inference costs while achieving superior performance compared to in-house solutions.
The funding follows significant expansion for Baseten, which has tripled its workforce to 50 employees and secured notable customers including Writer, Descript, Abridge, and Gamma. The company plans to use the new capital for product development, team growth, and geographic expansion.
Competition Heats Up in AI Infrastructure
The funding landscape in AI infrastructure has seen significant activity over the past year. In early 2024, Lambda reached unicorn status after securing a $320 million Series C round at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round, led by US Innovative Technology Fund, established Lambda as a key provider of 英伟达 's GPUs to enterprise customers including Microsoft and Amazon.
In March 2024, Together AI raised $106 million in funding led by Salesforce Ventures at a $1.25 billion valuation, more than doubling its valuation from its $102.5 million Series A in November 2023. The company has rapidly grown its user base to 45,000 registered users by offering access to 英伟达 GPUs and expanding into workflow services for AI model development.
In July 2024, Fireworks AI secured $52 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital , reaching a $552 million valuation. The company processes 140 billion tokens daily and claims to reduce inference times by up to 12 times compared to alternatives. Fireworks has partnered with MongoDB, Meta, NVIDIA, and AMD to enhance its platform capabilities.
Baseten's latest raise in February 2025 reflects continued investor confidence in AI infrastructure, particularly as organizations move beyond model development to focus on deployment and optimization challenges.
As AI adoption accelerates, these infrastructure providers are positioning themselves as critical enablers for organizations looking to deploy AI applications efficiently and at scale. The recent funding rounds underscore investor confidence in the sector's growth potential, even as attention shifts from model development to practical deployment and optimization challenges.
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