Wellington Management

Baseten Nears $1.5B Round at $13B Valuation

TechCrunch reports that AI inference startup Baseten is reportedly close to finalizing a $1.5 billion funding round that would value the company at about $13 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Baseten raised a $300 million Series E at a $5 billion valuation five months earlier and a $150 million Series D nine months before that. The WSJ says the new round is structured as a split-priced round, with some investors buying in at $13 billion and others at $11 billion. Sources say the deal is co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital and Wellington Management. Baseten, founded in 2019, focuses on routing inference requests to cost-effective models, including open-source alternatives.

Quince Soars to $10B Valuation with $500M Funding Boost

Quince announced a $500 million Series E round at a $10.1 billion valuation led by existing investor Iconiq. The financing more than doubles the company’s valuation since its reported $200 million Series D in early 2025 at a $4.5 billion valuation. Quince — a direct-to-consumer retailer known for its $50 cashmere sweater that launched out of beta in 2020 — says it now has top-line revenue above $1 billion and expanded into Canada in January. The company operates a “manufacturer-to-consumer” model, owning much of its tech stack and manufacturing. Other investors in the round include Basis Set Ventures, Wellington Management, WndrCo, MarcyPen Capital Partners, Baillie Gifford, Notable Capital, and DST Global. Quince has faced several lawsuits alleging copycat designs from brands including Tapestry (Coach) and Williams Sonoma; a separate suit from Deckers was previously decided in Quince’s favor.

Phynd Launches Ad-Funded Cloud Gaming with $10M Seed

Phynd, a newly launched cloud gaming platform monetised by ads rather than subscriptions, has announced a $10 million seed round led by Wellington Management. The capital will fund further development as Phynd plans a beta release later in the year. Co-founded by André Swanston, the former CEO of Tru Optik, Phynd positions ad-supported access as a path to broader reach beyond traditional gaming platforms such as Xbox Game Pass and GeForce Now. The company argues that a free-to-play, ad-funded model could expand gaming to hundreds of millions of TV viewers and smart-TV owners, citing 500 million smart TVs shipped globally in the last five years as a target audience. Phynd says its analytics and marketing tools will help developers engage new audiences, and that non-intrusive, audience-based ads and sponsorships could boost ad revenues for big-screen gaming, addressing a long-standing industry revenue gap.