On January 21, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources with inside knowledge, that Baseten—a startup dedicated to artificial intelligence inference—has successfully wrapped up a funding round of $300 million. This move has catapulted the company's valuation to $5 billion, nearly doubling its previous figure. The funding round was spearheaded by venture capital firm IVP and CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth fund. Notably, chip behemoth Nvidia also joined the fray, investing a hefty $150 million in Baseten as part of this strategic deal. As the industry's spotlight shifts from training models to large-scale operations and inference (the process where AI models churn out outputs based on given inputs), Nvidia is making a beeline for the AI inference sector. The company is ramping up its investments in relevant startups, all while maintaining its commitment to investing in its own AI chip customers.