The creators of vLLM have launched a startup called Inferact, securing $150 million in seed funding at an $800 million valuation. The funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, confirming previous reports about their investment in vLLM. This transition from an open-source project to a venture-backed company highlights a growing trend in the AI sector, where the focus is shifting from training models to deploying them effectively. Inferact's emergence parallels the launch of RadixArk, which commercializes the SGLang project and raised capital at a $400 million valuation led by Accel. Both vLLM and SGLang aim to enhance the efficiency of AI applications, making them faster and more cost-effective. They were developed in 2023 at the UC Berkeley lab of Ion Stoica, a co-founder of Databricks. Inferact's CEO, Simon Mo, indicated that notable users of vLLM include Amazon's cloud services and its shopping app. This connection to major players in the tech industry underscores the potential impact of vLLM in the AI deployment space. As investor interest grows in tools that facilitate the practical application of AI, Inferact is well-positioned to capitalize on this shift.