Together AI Raises $800 Million Series C at $8.3 Billion Valuation, Led by Aramco Ventures, to Scale Its Open-Model Cloud
Together AI raised an $800 million Series C led by Aramco Ventures at an $8.3 billion valuation, more than doubling its worth in about 16 months as enterprises shift toward cheaper open-source AI models.
Overview
Together AI, an AI “neocloud” that rents out Nvidia GPU clusters and other AI-specific infrastructure, has raised an $800 million Series C at an $8.3 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch. DataCenterDynamics reported the raise valued the company at $8.3 billion post-money. The round more than doubles the valuation the company commanded when it last raised a $305 million Series B at a $3.3 billion valuation about 16 months earlier, according to TechCrunch.
What We Know
- The round was led by Aramco Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, Nvidia, March Capital, Pegatron, and SentinelOne’s S Ventures, according to TechCrunch. DataCenterDynamics listed the same lead investor and participants.
- Together AI was founded in 2022 and is led by co-founder and CEO Vipul Ved Prakash, according to DataCenterDynamics. It was co-founded by Stanford professor Percy Liang and ETH Zürich/University of Chicago associate professor Ce Zhang, according to TechCrunch.
- The company claims annual bookings of over $1.15 billion as of its last quarter, according to TechCrunch, which named Cursor, Cognition, and Decagon among its customers.
- Together AI will use the funding to expand its products and scale its capacity and infrastructure footprint, targeting a 50-fold increase over the next five years, according to DataCenterDynamics.
Why It Matters
The raise reflects a broader shift in how enterprises buy AI compute. Companies are increasingly adopting less expensive open source models through neocloud providers like Together AI rather than paying the premiums charged for tokens on closed frontier models, according to TechCrunch, which reported that the trend has tripled usage of open source models across the industry in the past year.
Analysis
Together AI’s round lands amid a wave of large financings for specialized GPU cloud providers. Upscale AI raised an extension totaling $500 million at a $2 billion valuation the previous month, while TensorWave, which focuses on GPU clusters from AMD, raised a $350 million Series B at a $1.55 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch.
The company has also been lining up hardware capacity to match its expansion goals. DataCenterDynamics reported that Together AI recently struck an agreement with Rumble Inc. for Nvidia HGX B300 systems as dedicated cloud capacity, and that the company had earlier this year reportedly been seeking $1 billion in funding.
What We Don’t Know
The reports did not disclose whether Together AI is profitable, how the new capital will be split between product development and infrastructure buildout, or the precise geographic footprint of its data centers. It is also unclear how durable the enterprise shift toward open-weight models will prove as closed-model providers adjust their own pricing.