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Baseten's $1.5B, Sarvam, Meta-CRED & Europe's Fintech Drop
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
AI inference infrastructure attracts billion-dollar bets as Baseten closes a $1.5B Series F and Upscale AI hits a $2B valuation — capital is moving down the stack fast. Today's briefing also covers Sarvam AI's India LLM raise, Meta's reported $4B CRED play, and a sharp 31% decline in European fintech funding.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Baseten just raised one point five billion dollars for AI inference infrastructure, and that number tells you more about where the AI economy is heading than almost any model release this year. Inference isn't the glamorous part of the AI stack.
Baseten isn't alone. Upscale AI hit a two billion dollar valuation on a one hundred ninety million dollar raise for AI cluster networking, backed by Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures.
The geopolitical layer of this story runs through a Dutch semiconductor tooling company called Nearfield, which raised five hundred twenty-seven point six million dollars with backing from Temasek, QIA, and M&G. That combination of sovereign wealth funds entering what was previously a pure-venture category is a signal worth tracking.
India's Sarvam AI raised two hundred thirty-four million dollars at a one point five billion dollar valuation, led by HCLTech, to build Indian-language models and enterprise infrastructure. That's the largest India deal in the past week, and it marks something worth noting.
Meta is reportedly in early talks to invest four billion dollars in the Indian premium fintech CRED. The context matters here.
Two smaller raises round out the picture. French biotech Bionyra raised one hundred sixty-five million in a Series A on the back of a specific mechanism thesis in inflammatory disease, not a broad platform claim.
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