VC
Value Add VC
⚡HomePulse⚡Helpful Apps📝Blog
Home/Companies/Baseten
AI Infrastructure / InferenceFounded 2019·San Francisco, CA

Baseten

The AI-inference platform that turned 'running models in production' into its own infrastructure category.

Updated June 30, 2026 · Analysis by Trace Cohen · baseten.co

Valuation
~$13B

Series F, Jun 2026

~$13B
Valuation

Series F, Jun 2026

~$600M
Annualized revenue

Mar 2026 — ~+1,900% YoY, up from $200M in Dec 2025

1B+
Inference calls/day

across 87 clusters, 18 clouds

$1.5B
Series F raised

Jun 2026

Baseten's revenue ramp

From ~$200M annualized in Dec 2025 to ~$600M by Mar 2026 — a ~20x YoY jump.

Source: Company reports / press (2025–26)

Valuation: ~$13B

~$13B — a $1.5B Series F in June 2026 (two tranches, $11B and $13B) led by Altimeter, Conviction, and Spark Capital. Just five months earlier it was a $5B company.

How Baseten makes money

Baseten runs usage-based AI inference: customers pay either for API consumption on open-source models or for GPU minutes/hours, with Baseten packaging autoscaling, observability, billing, and developer tooling around it.

Growth is driven by companies moving workloads onto open-source and custom models instead of closed APIs — Baseten is the production layer that makes that switch operationally viable, which is why its annualized revenue tripled in a single quarter.

Funding

Baseten raised a $300M Series E in January 2026 at $5B (IVP, CapitalG, Nvidia), then a $1.5B Series F in June 2026 at up to $13B (Altimeter, Conviction, Spark, with Sands, Wellington, IVP, and Greylock).

Competitive landscape

Together AI

Open-model inference and fine-tuning platform.

Fireworks AI

Fast inference for open-source models.

Modal & Replicate

Developer-first model-serving and compute platforms.

Hyperscalers & Nvidia

AWS Bedrock, Azure, GCP inference plus Nvidia's own stack.

TC

Trace's Take

Trace Cohen · early-stage VC

Baseten is the purest bet on the 'inference is the real AI infrastructure' thesis: a $5B company in January, ~$13B by June, with annualized revenue up ~20x year over year. The growth is real because the tailwind is real — every team moving off closed APIs onto open-source models needs a production layer. The risk is that inference is the most contested layer in AI, with hyperscalers and Nvidia sitting directly upstream of Baseten's margins.

Frequently asked questions

How much is Baseten worth?+

Baseten is valued at roughly $13 billion after a $1.5B Series F in June 2026 (priced across two tranches at $11B and $13B), led by Altimeter, Conviction, and Spark Capital — up from $5B just five months earlier.

What is Baseten's ARR/revenue?+

Baseten reached roughly $600 million in annualized revenue by March 2026 — about +1,900% year over year — up from $200 million in December 2025.

What does Baseten do?+

Baseten runs a usage-based AI inference platform: customers pay for API consumption on open-source models or for GPU minutes/hours, and Baseten handles autoscaling, observability, billing, and tooling. It serves 1B+ inference calls per day across 87 clusters and 18 clouds.

Why is AI inference such a hot category?+

As companies move workloads off closed APIs and onto open-source and custom models, they need a reliable production layer to serve them at scale — making inference one of AI's most contested infrastructure layers, with platforms like Baseten growing ~20x year over year.

Related

Baseten revenue & valuation (analysis)→
AI company valuations→
AI spending & capex→

Sources

  • StartupFortune — Baseten raises $1.5B at $13B
  • The Information — Baseten talks $1B raise at $11B
  • Sacra — Baseten

Analysis by Trace Cohen · @Trace_Cohen · t@nyvp.com. Figures are as of the update date; verify before relying on them.