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Baseten, a startup that runs artificial intelligence models for clients on their cloud infrastructure, has raised $75 million in funding, the company said Wednesday.

The funding round values Baseten at $825 million and demonstrates that venture capitalists believe tech’s AI boom stands to benefit a plethora of startups, not just those building large language models. In recent months, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI have raised billions in funding, with much of the money going toward servers containing Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs.

After companies finish training AI models on reams of data, they need to deploy those models somewhere at the inference stage, which is when models generate outputs in response to user queries. That’s when Baseten comes in.

Rather than run its own data centers, Baseten runs its software on data center equipment from cloud providers, including Amazon and Google. Customers can supply their own infrastructure with an enterprise tier. By drawing from multiple providers, Baseten offers access to more GPUs than a single cloud’s current supply.

“In this market, your No. 1 differentiation is how fast you can move. That is the core benefit for our customers,” co-founder and CEO Tuhin Srivastava said. “You can go to production without worrying about reliability, security and performance.”

Companies can manage the deployment of their models without Baseten, but securing enough Nvidia chips in the right geographical areas can prove difficult, co-founder Amir Haghighat told CNBC.

Cloud providers sometimes inform customers that some GPUs will be moved into maintenance mode and become unavailable within minutes. Baseten helps its clients handle those instances without interruptions, Srivastava said.

After the January breakthrough of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, which claimed its models were trained for a fraction of the costs as its U.S. counterparts, efficiency in AI has become more important than ever.

Baseten was quick to add support for DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model that compares to OpenAI’s o1. Baseten’s website promises top-tier performance at a fraction of OpenAI’s cost. There has been a lot of inbound from organizations looking at switching to DeepSeek, and Baseten has been busy trying to keep up, Srivastava said.

“There are a lot of people paying millions of dollars per quarter to OpenAI and Anthropic that are thinking, ‘How can I save money?'” he said. “And they’ve flocked.”

Baseten clients often see their inference costs fall 40% or more, while receiving better performance, in comparison with homegrown architectures, head of marketing Mike Bilodeau wrote in an email.

The startup’s revenue for the fiscal year that ended in January was six times more than it was in the prior year, Srivastava said, without providing a dollar figure.

Founded in 2019 and based in San Francisco, Baseten has about 60 employees. Existing investors IVP and Spark Capital led the new round, with others participating. More than 100 enterprises are customers, along with hundreds of smaller companies, such as Descript, Patreon and Writer.

Competitors include Salesforce-backed Together AI. Another challenge is that Baseten must compete with AI model companies and hedge funds for talent.

“Having more money in somewhat of a weird economic environment, it does not hurt,” Srivastava said.

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Bitcoin price rises as Israel-Iran ceasefire begins, and Senate unveils major crypto bill

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Bitcoin price rises as Israel-Iran ceasefire begins, and Senate unveils major crypto bill

Crypto prices, including bitcoin, rose on Tuesday after President Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.

By midday Tuesday, bitcoin had passed the $105,000 level, ether jumped back above the $2,400 mark, and XRP climbed to $2.19. 

The risk-on action in the markets, which also saw stocks rally on the Mideast de-escalation, wasn’t the only source of momentum, as Republican senators unveiled a major bill to set the rules of the road for crypto. Specifically, the legislation would define when crypto is a commodity or a security, allow crypto exchanges to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and reduce the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulation of digital assets — a big reversal from the plans of President Biden’s SEC Chair Gary Gensler to closely regulate the crypto industry.

The new framework was introduced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott of South Carolina and Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who heads the panel’s Digital Assets Committee. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the regulatory development was important for the U.S. to regain the lead in the crypto industry, where he said it has fallen behind other markets, including Europe.

Last week, the senate passed a stablecoin bill, marking the first major legislative win for the crypto industry, which now heads to the House for consideration of its version of the bill. Both bills prohibit yield-bearing consumer stablecoins — but differ on agency regulatory oversight. Visa CEO Ryan McInerney weighed in on the advancement of the Senate version, the Genius Act, telling CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that the credit card giant has been embracing stablecoins. 

Meanwhile, investors increased their bets on crypto company Digital Asset, which raised $135 million in funding from several big names in banking and finance, including Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. The firm, which touts itself as a regulated crypto player, said it will use the funding to advance adoption of its Canton network, which is a blockchain for financial institutions, another sign of how major financial institutions are embedding themselves into the once obscure crypto world. 

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Ambarella shares soar 19% on report chip designer is exploring sale

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Ambarella shares soar 19% on report chip designer is exploring sale

Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Ambarella shares popped 19% after a report that the chip designer is currently working with bankers on a potential sale.

Bloomberg reported the news, citing sources familiar with the matter.

While no deal is imminent, the sources told Bloomberg that the firm may draw interest from semiconductor companies looking to improve their automotive business. Private equity firms have already expressed interest, according to the report.

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The Santa Clara, California-based company is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence. Ambarella chips are used in the automotive sector for electronic mirrors and self-driving assistance systems.

Shares have slumped about 18% year to date. The company’s market capitalization last stood at nearly $2.6 billion.

Read the Bloomberg story here.

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Nvidia CEO Huang sells $15 million worth of stock, first sale of $873 million plan

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Nvidia CEO Huang sells  million worth of stock, first sale of 3 million plan

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold 100,000 shares of the chipmaker’s stock on Friday and Monday, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The sales are worth nearly $15 million at Tuesday’s opening price.

The transactions are the first sale in Huang’s plan to sell as many as 600,000 shares of Nvidia through the end of 2025. It’s a plan that was announced in March, and it’d be worth $873 million at Tuesday’s opening price.

The Nvidia founder still owns more than 800 million Nvidia shares, according to Monday’s SEC filing. Huang has a net worth of about $126 billion, ranking him 12th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The 62-year-old chief executive sold about $700 million in Nvidia shares last year under a prearranged plan, too.

Nvidia stock is up more than 800% since December 2022 after OpenAI’s ChatGPT was first released to the public. That launch drew attention to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, which were needed to develop and power the artificial intelligence service.

The company’s chips remain in high demand with the majority of the AI chip market, and Nvidia has introduced two subsequent generations of its AI GPU technology.

Nvidia continues to grow. Its stock is up 9% this year, even as the company faces export control issues that could limit foreign markets for its AI chips.

In May, the company reported first-quarter earnings that showed the chipmaker’s revenue growing 69% on an annual basis to $44 billion during the quarter.

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Market Navigator: Nvidia warning signs

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