tech
January 22, 2026
Inference startup Inferact lands $150M to commercialize vLLM
The seed round values the newly formed startup at $800 million.
TL;DR
- vLLM, an open-source tool, has transitioned into a VC-backed startup called Inferact.
- Inferact raised $150 million in seed funding at an $800 million valuation.
- The funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
- The commercialization of vLLM mirrors that of the SGLang project, which became RadixArk.
- Investor attention is shifting towards technologies that make AI inference faster and more affordable.
- Both vLLM and SGLang originated from a lab at UC Berkeley.
- Existing vLLM users include Amazon's cloud service and a shopping app.