Baseten Accelerates Time to Market for Companies Scaling Inference in Production

Baseten is an AI infrastructure company designed to make inference simple, fast, and dependable. For many teams, taking a model from development to production is one of the hardest parts of building with AI. Baseten solves this problem by equipping developers with the right tools, expertise, and hardware so they can move from idea to deployment without losing momentum.

The company’s Inference Stack blends cutting-edge performance research with proven infrastructure, delivering global availability with 99.99 percent uptime right out of the box. Instead of wrestling with scale, failures, or complicated pipelines, developers can focus on creating meaningful products. Baseten exists to manage the toughest parts of production so teams can keep innovating.

We spoke with Amir Haghighat, co-founder and CEO of Baseten, to learn how the company is shaping the next wave of AI products and why inference is the key to unlocking their value.

The Hidden Bottleneck in AI

When most people picture AI development, they think of breakthroughs in research, model training, or new applications in text and image generation. Amir pointed out that these milestones, while exciting, often distract from the real bottleneck.

“You can train a model on your laptop or in the cloud,” he said. “But once you need that model to serve thousands or millions of users, the real complexity begins. That’s where Baseten comes in.”

This stage, known as inference, is the process of running a trained model in production so it can deliver predictions in real time. Amir believes it is the backbone of any successful AI product, yet it remains one of the least understood steps.

“Inference is where AI meets the real world,” he explained. “If you cannot deploy with confidence, your model is just research. We built Baseten to bridge that gap.”

Making Inference Work for Everyone

Baseten’s mission is to simplify inference so teams of all sizes can move fast without sacrificing reliability. Amir said the company’s approach comes from listening to the daily frustrations developers encounter.

“Most teams aren’t struggling to train models anymore,” he explained. “They’re struggling to keep those models running at scale without downtime, massive costs, or the need for an entire DevOps team to babysit deployments.”

The Inference Stack addresses those challenges directly. By combining high-performance research with resilient infrastructure, the platform offers global availability with near-perfect uptime. Developers don’t have to reinvent the wheel; they can rely on a system built specifically for AI at scale.

“Think of it as plumbing,” Amir said. “You don’t want to worry about whether water will come out of the tap. You just want it to work, every time. That’s what Baseten gives you for inference.”

Bringing Ideas to Market Faster

Speed is another recurring theme in Baseten’s story. In a market where ideas move quickly, the ability to go from prototype to production can determine whether a product leads or lags behind.

“We’ve seen countless teams build incredible prototypes, only to stall when they try to deploy,” Amir said. “They spend weeks or months wrestling with infrastructure. That delay doesn’t just slow innovation, it kills morale.”

With Baseten, deployment pipelines are streamlined. The platform scales automatically, allowing a model to serve a handful of users today and millions tomorrow without major reengineering. Teams can iterate, test, and release products at the speed of their ideas.

“Momentum matters,” Amir said. “If you have to stop and rebuild your systems every time you scale, you lose the spark. Baseten keeps that spark alive.”

Serving Startups and Enterprises Alike

Baseten is designed to serve both ends of the spectrum, from lean startups to global enterprises. While their needs differ, Amir said the underlying problem is the same.

“A startup founder may not have the resources to manage complex infrastructure,” he explained. “An enterprise might have the resources but can’t afford downtime or compliance issues. Both need inference that just works.”

By delivering enterprise-grade reliability in a developer-friendly platform, Baseten gives small teams access to infrastructure that would otherwise be out of reach, while larger organizations gain scalability and compliance they can trust.

Lessons From Building Baseten

Amir said Baseten’s journey has been guided by customer conversations. That focus has been crucial in creating a product that resonates.

“We didn’t start by saying, ‘Let’s build an infrastructure platform.’ We started by asking, ‘Why are so many AI products failing to reach production?’ Once we understood that inference was the sticking point, everything clicked.”

He also credits the company’s technical team for turning deep research into practical engineering. “We’re standing on the shoulders of incredible research in model performance and systems design. Our job is to take that work and make it usable for developers building real products.”

The Bigger Picture

Baseten is about enabling innovation. By removing friction from deployment, the company allows teams to concentrate on solving problems and building products that make an impact.

“Inference may sound technical,” Amir reflected, “but at the end of the day, it’s about delivering value to users. If your model isn’t in production, it’s not changing anything. That’s why we believe inference is everything.”

What’s Next for Baseten

Asked about the future, Amir said Baseten aims to be a driving force in moving AI from the lab to everyday use.

“The conversation around AI is still dominated by models,” he noted. “But what really matters is whether those models can deliver value at scale. That’s where inference comes in, and that’s where Baseten will keep pushing the boundaries.”

He also hinted at ongoing efforts to make the platform even more accessible, with features that simplify deployment for non-experts while offering flexibility for advanced teams.

“AI shouldn’t be limited to those with massive infrastructure budgets,” Amir said. “Our vision is to democratize inference so anyone with a good idea can bring it to market.”

Amir Haghighat, Co-Founder, Baseten

Our proprietary Inference Stack utilizes the cutting-edge of performance research combined with highly performant and reliable infrastructure to give you out-of-the-box global availability with 99.99% of uptime.