Nvidia Invests $150M in AI Inference Startup Baseten Amid Market Shift

Nvidia has positioned itself at the forefront of the AI inference revolution with a $150 million investment in Baseten, part of a $300 million funding round valuing the startup at $5 billion. The MOVE signals a strategic pivot as inference workloads are projected to dominate 60-80% of AI operations within five years, up from just 20-40% today.

Baseten specializes in deploying large AI models, with CEO Tuhin Srivastava positioning the company as 'the invisible infrastructure behind the AI-first economy.' The investment comes alongside Nvidia's $20 billion acquisition of Groq's inference technology, creating a formidable one-two punch in the accelerating inference market.

The competitive landscape is intensifying as Google, AMD, and other chipmakers develop inference-specific solutions. This arms race reflects the growing realization that while model training grabs headlines, inference - the actual application of AI - will drive the next phase of industry growth.