Baseten CEO Tuhin Srivastava on the AI Inference Crunch, Custom Models, and Building the Inference Cloud

About this episode

Tuhin Srivastava discusses the growth of AI inference demand and the strategic importance of custom models in the AI landscape.

Baseten CEO and co-founder Tuhin Srivastava sits down with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to discuss the rapid growth of AI inference demand, Baseten’s 30x growth, and why inference is becoming the strategic “last market.” Tuhin Srivastava argues the application layer will persist because companies with unique user signals can encode value into workflows and post-train specialized models, citing examples like Abridge and support workflows. The conversation covers GPU capacity constraints, Baseten’s multi-cloud fabric across 18 clouds and 90 clusters, long-term contracting dynamics, the importance of the software layer for stickiness, evolving workloads, multichip possibilities, and operational lessons at scale. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @Tuhinone Chapters: 00:31 Baseten growth 01:55 Why the app layer wins 05:57 Serving frontier customers 07:55 Open source model mix 09:21 Chinese models and geopolitics 13:07 Custom inference dominates 14:22 Post training acquisition 17:10 When to invest in custom models 18:35 Supply crunch and data centerse 22:25 Longer GPU Contracts 24:09 What…

People in this episode

Hosts: Sarah Guo, Elad Gil

Guest: Tuhin Srivastava

Topics covered

• AI inference
• custom models
• cloud computing
• business growth
• GPU capacity
• operational lessons

Keywords

• AI inference
• Baseten
• custom models
• GPU capacity
• cloud fabric
• operational lessons
• business growth

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Baseten, Abridge

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