\n<\/p>\n
The creators of the open source project vLLM have announced<\/a> that they transitioned the popular tool into a VC-backed startup, Inferact, raising $150 million in seed funding at an $800 million valuation.<\/p>\n The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, confirming TechCrunch\u2019s earlier reporting<\/a> that vLLM has raised capital from a16z.<\/p>\n Inferact\u2019s debut mirrors the recent commercialization of the SGLang project as RadixArk, which sources told us secured capital at a $400 million valuation led by Accel, as we reported<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n As the focus in AI shifts from training models to deploying them in applications, a process known as inference, technologies like vLLM and SGLang that make these AI tools run faster and more affordably are attracting investor attention.<\/p>\n Both vLLM and SGLang were incubated in 2023 at the UC Berkeley lab of Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica.<\/p>\n Inferact CEO Simon Mo, one of the project\u2019s original creators, told Bloomberg that existing users of vLLM include Amazon\u2019s cloud service and the shopping app.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n