① Lambda, a cloud-computing startup backed by NVIDIA, is raising up to $4 billion, with a pre-money valuation of $14.5 billion; ② As of June this year, Lambda's backlog of AI computing capacity orders stood at $15 billion, which had surged to $50 billion by September; ③ Lambda's management aims to go public in 2027, though the exact timing will depend on progress in preparations and market conditions.
Cailian Press, October 7 (Editor: Niu Zhanlin) — According to insiders, Lambda, a cloud-computing startup backed by NVIDIA, is raising up to $4 billion, which will be the final round of funding before the company's planned initial public offering (IPO).
This round of financing will bring Lambda's pre-money valuation to $14.5 billion, with the pre-IPO funding led by Blackstone Group and Coatue Management. Both investment firms have been actively expanding their presence in the AI and data center sectors in recent years.
According to reports, Lambda's management aims to launch an IPO in 2027, though the exact timing will depend on progress in preparations and market conditions. As of June this year, Lambda's backlog of AI computing capacity orders stood at $15 billion, a figure that had risen to $50 billion by September.
Since this spring, Lambda has been implementing a series of personnel changes, moves that appear to be aimed at preparing the company for scrutiny in the public markets.
In May this year, Lambda appointed seasoned corporate executive Michel Combes to succeed co-founder Stephen Balaban as CEO, with Balaban assuming the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
Lambda is one of the rapidly emerging "new‑cloud" companies in recent years. The so‑called "new cloud" refers to a category of digital infrastructure firms that acquire GPUs and other custom chips for training and running large language models, then rent out this computational capacity to customers who need computing power to develop or operate AI tools.
In February 2025, NVIDIA participated in Lambda's Series D funding round, which raised $480 million. Lambda's most recent funding round was completed last November, led by TWG Capital, backed by investors Mark Walter and Thomas Tull, with a total of $1.5 billion. According to the company's announcement and estimates from the venture capital platform Forge Global, Lambda's post-money valuation at that time was $5.9 billion.
Lambda was founded in 2012 by twin brothers Stephen Balaban and Michael Balaban, both graduates of the University of Michigan with degrees in computer science. For years, Lambda has positioned itself as an engineer‑driven cloud computing company with deep expertise in AI technologies.
As more and more companies begin adopting AI tools, the cloud computing industry has remained booming over the past year. Earlier this year, Stephen Balaban stated that Lambda has consistently relied on NVIDIA's technology, with all its chips and server racks sourced from NVIDIA.
According to reports, Lambda's order backlog has grown substantially, largely driven by a $35 billion commitment from Anthropic, the developer of the Claude series of models.
This means that Lambda's valuation, which has risen sharply since its last funding round in 2025, may largely hinge on Anthropic's ability to continue covering its associated costs. Even so, with reliable GPU compute resources in extremely short supply, investors remain willing to bet on companies that can deliver such capacity—particularly those with sizable contracts from major AI research labs.