Baseten's $13 billion tranche prices a company that cuts its own rates every 15 days
Bloomberg says AI investors now split rounds into tranches so later money prints a higher price; Baseten's second tranche marked it at $13 billion in the same week it cut brand-new token prices by up to 72 percent.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The markup and the cut landed the same week
Baseten~$1.4B — Baseten, private, latest valuation ~$1.4B, the San Francisco company whose inference platform runs the models behind Cursor, Notion~$10B — Notion, private, latest valuation ~$10B, Abridge$6.69B — Abridge, private, latest valuation $6.69B and Clay, closed $1.5 billion in two tranches: first at an $11 billion valuation, then at $13 billion, led by Altimeter, Conviction and Spark Capital 128. The Wall Street Journal reported the dual-tier structure in June; PYMNTS relayed it under the headline "as inference demand surges" 3.
Inference, the business of running AI models and billing per token, is where the money is moving this cycle 3. Anyone holding that exposure through secondaries, through perpetual futures on private AI names, or through listed stocks standing in for them is marked off prints like these.
The same week the tranche story ran, Baseten's own rate card moved the other way. Beam, a 501-billion-parameter open-weight reasoning model from the lab Reflection, joined Baseten's Model APIs catalog on October 17, 2026, at $1.30 per million input tokens and $4.30 output 456. Four days later those rates fell to $0.40 and $1.20, up to 72 percent off, now live on the pricing page 456. It was Baseten's third cut and seventh price change in 90 days, roughly one every 15 days 4.
Reflection Beam's launch prices lasted four days
- Launch, 17 Oct
- After cut, 21 Oct
Data
| Launch, 17 Oct | After cut, 21 Oct | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input | $1.30 | $0.40 | -69.2% |
| Cached input | $0.13 | $0.04 | -69.2% |
| Output | $4.30 | $1.20 | -72.1% |
Two prices for one company, weeks apart
Bloomberg's report describes the mechanism as deliberate: split the round so later money prints a higher valuation mid-deal 1. Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former Google DeepMind scientist David Silver, raised $11 million at about $55 million pre-money 2. A month later it took $1.1 billion at $4 billion pre-money, more than 70 times the price, with Sequoia buying at both levels 2.
Etched$538M — Etched, private, latest valuation $538M, which builds inference chips, printed $10.3 billion in July and $21 billion in August, led by Jane Street, the quant fund that tested its hardware and now runs its own rack 7.
The top number is the one that gets reported, and the one later buyers are asked to pay. "Everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation," posted Brendan Foody, chief executive of the AI-hiring startup Mercor~$2B — Mercor, private, latest valuation ~$2B, in June, adding that every top firm does it 2. The sharper point is Amplify partner Sarah Catanzaro's: the company's real worth is the blended valuation, a weighted average that usually goes unreported 2.
One round, two prices: the second tranche prints higher
- First tranche
- Second tranche
Data
| First tranche | Second tranche | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseten | $11.000B | $13.000B | +18.2% |
| Etched | $10.300B | $21.000B | +103.9% |
| Ineffable | $0.055B | $4.000B | +7172.7% |
The denominator reprices every two weeks
Bloomberg credits a 20-fold revenue jump for Baseten's step-up 1. But inference revenue is price multiplied by tokens, and Baseten resets price on a clock: on September 22 it cut DeepSeek cached input 77 percent, to $0.007 per million tokens 4.
The counterpoint holds partly. Volume has outrun price so far: annualized revenue ran at roughly $200 million entering the first quarter and $600 million leaving it, per June reporting relayed by PYMNTS 3. Cheap tokens are also the product; when Baseten raised $300 million at $5 billion in January, anchored by NVIDIA+2.07% — NVIDIA, up 2.07 percent today, Shiv Rao, chief executive of the medical AI note-taker Abridge, credited it with "constantly finding ways to lower our costs" 8.
Baseten's printed valuation has climbed 2.6 times since January
Data
| Reported valuation | |
|---|---|
| January 2026 | $5B |
| First tranche | $11B |
| Second tranche | $13B |
The Inference traced in September who funds the GPU commitments underneath. None of it prints the blend.
Who pays the printed number
Employees hired after a tranche strike options near the top mark, "taking more of the risk and capturing less of the upside," Foundation Capital's Jaya Gupta says 2. Secondary buyers and holders of perps or listed proxies inherit the same headline. The working rule: discount marks built in tranches until token price lists stop falling. Two tells decide it: Baseten's rate card, on a 15-day cadence since July 4, and whether the next tranche print arrives with its blended valuation attached.
Get Deals by email, free
The acquisitions, rounds and contracts that move AI money. In our daily email, every weekday.
