The rise of advanced AI reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 has transformed the computational landscape for AI infrastructure providers. Together AI has secured significant funding to meet growing enterprise demands for high-performance AI model deployment and reasoning capabilities.
Recent funding and growth: Together AI has raised $305 million in Series B funding led by General Catalyst and Prosperity7, marking a significant expansion of its AI deployment platform.
- The company has experienced 6X year-over-year growth with over 450,000 registered developers
- Notable customers include AI startups like Krea AI, Captions, and Pika Labs
- The platform now supports multiple AI modalities including language, reasoning, images, audio, and video
Infrastructure demands: Contrary to initial expectations, DeepSeek-R1 and similar reasoning models are driving increased infrastructure requirements.
- DeepSeek-R1’s 671 billion parameters require distribution across multiple servers
- User requests can last up to 2-3 minutes, necessitating dedicated computational resources
- Together AI has introduced “reasoning clusters” offering 128 to 2,000 chips for optimal performance
Key applications: Reasoning models are finding practical applications across various use cases.
- Enhanced coding capabilities through problem decomposition
- Reduced model hallucinations through verification processes
- Quality improvements in non-reasoning models
- Self-improvement capabilities using reinforcement learning
Technical innovations: Together AI has made strategic moves to enhance its platform capabilities.
- Acquisition of CodeSandbox for lightweight VM deployment
- Implementation of Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, offering 2X performance improvement
- Optimization of inference speeds, achieving 85 tokens per second compared to Azure’s 7 tokens per second
Competitive landscape: Together AI operates in an increasingly crowded market for AI infrastructure.
- Major cloud providers Microsoft, AWS, and Google offer competing platforms
- Specialized AI infrastructure providers like Groq and Samba Nova target similar markets
- Together AI differentiates through full-stack offerings and superior performance metrics
Market implications: The increasing demand for AI infrastructure, particularly for reasoning models, suggests a continuing trend toward more sophisticated and resource-intensive AI applications, potentially creating new opportunities and challenges for infrastructure providers and enterprises alike.
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