Applied Compute in talks to double valuation to 3 billion dollars on open-source AI demand, round led by Elad Gil
Applied Compute, a startup that helps businesses customize open-source AI models, is in talks to raise funding at a $3 billion valuation, over double its $1.3 billion valuation from April. The round is led by Elad Gil. The jump signals investor demand shifting toward open-weight
Applied Compute, a San Francisco startup founded in 2025 by former OpenAI researchers Yash Patil, Rhythm Garg and Linden Li, is in talks to raise new funding at a valuation of roughly $3 billion, according to reporting from The Information. That would more than double the $1.3 billion post-money valuation the company disclosed after an $80 million raise in April. The new round is reportedly led by investor Elad Gil. Applied Compute's business is helping enterprises customize and deploy open-source AI models rather than relying solely on closed, proprietary systems from labs like OpenAI or Anthropic. The scale and speed of the valuation jump, doubling in roughly four months, points to how much investor capital is now chasing the enterprise open-source AI tooling layer specifically, a narrower and newer category than the foundation-model labs that dominated AI funding headlines through most of 2025 and into 2026, and a sign that enterprise demand for open-weight deployment has become its own investable market.