Neocloud Together AI raises $800 million, jumps to $8.3 billion valuation

Together AI — a new AI cloud that leases Nvidia GPU clusters and other AI infrastructure — has raised an $800 million Series C at a valuation of $8.3 billion, the company said. Announced on Wednesday. The company was founded in 2022.

The round was led by Aramco Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, Nvidia, March Capital, Pegatron, SentinelOne’s S Ventures, and others.

Together AI has raised a Series B of $305 million at $3.3 billiontion About 16 months ago. He actually came out of the gate well-funded Series A financing round of $102.5 million Led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Nvidia and Emergence Capital in 2023.

There were whispers about this tour last March, when… Information It was reported that the company was seeking $1 billion in financing, but at a valuation of $7.5 billion. If the numbers in this report are accurate, this means Together AI received less money but may have gotten a better deal from venture capital firms than it was seeking in the spring.

The massive capital infusion comes as Together AI claims annual bookings of more than $1.15 billion as of last quarter, as companies increasingly embrace efficient but much less expensive open source models via new cloud service providers like Together AI. They are increasingly turning to this option rather than paying premiums on closed-border model tokens for all their AI uses.

This has led to a doubling of the use of open source models across the industry in the past year, Together AI says, noting To search From another company taking advantage of this trend, OpenRouter AI Gateway. Together AI says it has thousands of paying customers, including Cursor, Cognition, and Decagon.

New clouds have been hot commodities for venture capital investment more broadly, not just for AI. High-end AI raised the A plus series in the extension Totaling $500 million at a $2 billion valuation last month; TensorWave – which focuses on AMD’s GPU clusters – has been upgraded A $350 million Series B at a $1.55 billion valuation last month as well, to name just two recent examples.

Together AI was co-founded by Vipul Ved Prakash (pictured above, centre) after he sold his previous startup, social media search platform Topsy, to Apple in 2013 for $200 million. The co-founders of Together AI are Professor Percy Liang of Stanford University (above, left) and ETH Zurich/University of Chicago associate professor Si Zhang (above, right).