Nvidia has invested $150 million in AI inference startup Baseten as part of a $300 million funding round that values the company at roughly $5 billion, according to people familiar with the deal.
The transaction more than doubled Baseten’s prior valuation.
The round was led by venture firms IVP and CapitalG, with participation from Nvidia.
Baseten, founded in 2019 and based in San Francisco, helps companies deploy and operate large AI models in production, focusing on inference rather than model training.
Baseten’s customers include AI coding tool Cursor and productivity platform Notion.
The company has now raised approximately $585 million in total funding. CEO and co-founder Tuhin Srivastava has described Baseten’s ambition as building an “AWS for inference,” positioning the company as core infrastructure for AI-powered applications.
The investment reflects Nvidia’s growing focus on inference as demand shifts from training large models to running them efficiently at scale.
Nvidia has increasingly backed companies that rely on its chips, deepening its influence across the AI software and infrastructure stack.
Why This Matters Today
As AI adoption accelerates, inference has become a critical bottleneck.
Running models quickly, reliably, and at lower cost is now as important as training them. Nvidia’s investment signaled that inference infrastructure is a strategic priority, not just a downstream concern.
The deal followed other aggressive moves by Nvidia, including a $20 billion licensing agreement with Groq and expanded partnerships with OpenAI.
Together, these investments positioned Nvidia to control more of the AI lifecycle, from chips to deployment.
For startups like Baseten, Nvidia’s backing provides capital, credibility, and closer alignment with the dominant supplier of AI compute, potentially accelerating enterprise adoption.
Our Key Takeaways:
- Nvidia invested $150 million in Baseten as part of a $300 million funding round.
- Baseten focuses on AI inference, helping companies deploy and run large models.
- The deal highlights Nvidia’s strategic shift toward powering AI at scale, not just training models.
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