AI Infrastructure Startups Score Over $1B
The AI infrastructure space is attracting massive capital, led by Together AI, which secured a $1 billion round to scale its AI cloud compute. Deeptune also raised $42.2M for its AI agent "training gyms," while AI sales platform Firmable landed $14M for global expansion, signaling deep conviction in the AI-as-infrastructure thesis.
Together AI's latest funding more than doubled its previous $1.25 billion valuation from March 2024, now placing the company at $3.3 billion. The firm, founded in 2022 by serial entrepreneurs and AI researchers from Stanford, aims to provide a decentralized cloud platform for developers to run and fine-tune open-source AI models. The company's founders include Vipul Ved Prakash, who sold a social media analytics firm, Topsy, to Apple in 2013, and Chris Ré, who sold his machine learning startup, Lattice.io, to Apple in 2017. Together AI has already attracted over 45,000 registered developers and is strategically backed by industry giants like Salesforce Ventures and Nvidia. Deeptune, based in New York, is developing simulation environments, or "training gyms," where AI agents can practice and learn complex software tasks like coding or using Salesforce. The company recently secured a $42.2 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $221 million valuation and has seen rapid growth, reaching over $10 million in annualized recurring revenue in under six months. Melbourne-based Firmable is tackling the sales intelligence market with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region, a differentiator from US-centric competitors like ZoomInfo. Co-founded by executives from Aconex, which Oracle acquired for $1.6 billion, Firmable emphasizes its proprietary dataset to power its AI agents for identifying real-time buying signals. For DeFi and crypto trading, this wave of AI infrastructure is critical. AI-powered agents are increasingly used for automating liquidity management and trade execution on decentralized exchanges. The underlying technology allows for real-time analysis of vast blockchain datasets to detect market anomalies, predict loan defaults, and flag fraudulent activities. This infrastructure is fundamental for sophisticated risk management in digital assets. AI models can analyze on-chain activity 24/7 to proactively identify threats, assess the integrity of smart contracts, and even auto-adjust collateral ratios in DeFi lending protocols, making the systems smarter and more secure.
