# Lambda revenue, valuation & funding

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/companies/lambda/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Lambda's last confirmed valuation was $1.5B, in February 2024, and in October 2026 it was reported in talks to raise up to $4B at $14.5B pre-money. It's private, was expected in August 2026 to make more than $1.5B in 2026 revenue, and aims to go public in 2027.

Checked Nov 7, 2026

## At a glance

- Valuation: $1.5B at its last confirmed round, in February 2024. It was reported in October 2026 to be in talks to raise up to $4B at a $14.5B pre-money valuation.
- Revenue: expected to top $1.5B for full-year 2026, as reported in August 2026. That figure is a projection.
- Status: private. No stock ticker. Aims to go public in 2027.
- Founded: 2012, by Stephen and Michael Balaban.
- CEO: [Michel Combes](https://realalpha.app/builders/michel-combes/), since May 2026.
- Investors: TWG Global, USIT, Nvidia, B Capital and Gradient Ventures, among others.
- Products: GPU cloud Instances, 1-Click Clusters and Superclusters, all on NVIDIA GPUs.
- Headquarters: San Jose, according to Sacra.

## Is Lambda public? Can you buy its stock?

No. Lambda is a private company, so its shares don't trade on any stock exchange and it has no ticker symbol.

Lambda has been preparing a listing since 2025. In September 2025 The Information reported that it hired Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Citi for an IPO ([Sacra](https://sacra.com/research/no-side-quests-for-lambda/)). In January 2026 The Information reported a plan to list in the second half of 2026 ([Forge Global](https://forgeglobal.com/insights/lambda-upcoming-ipo-news/)).

That debut was pushed back amid market uncertainty, [TechCrunch reported](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/ai-computing-startup-lambda-to-raise-4b-ahead-of-planned-ipo/) in October 2026. A letter to its limited partners, reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, says Lambda aims to go public in 2027. That depends on execution and market conditions. No IPO filing has been reported.

Its shares are held privately by its investors, among them TWG Global, USIT and Nvidia. No stakes have been disclosed. This page reports facts and gives no investment advice.

## Valuation, round by round

Lambda's last confirmed valuation was $1.5B in February 2024, and the round in talks in October 2026 would value it at $14.5B before new money.

- Oct 2026 · $14.5B · In talks · Coatue Management and Blackstone · [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/ai-computing-startup-lambda-to-raise-4b-ahead-of-planned-ipo/)
- Aug 2026 · $12B · In talks · — · [Tech Funding News](https://techfundingnews.com/lambda-eyes-12b-valuation-with-3b-pre-ipo-raise-as-ai-cloud-race-heats-up/)
- Nov 2025 · — · $1.5B+ · TWG Global · [Lambda's blog](https://lambda.com/blog/lambda-raises-over-1.5b-from-twg-global-usit-to-build-superintelligence-cloud-infrastructure)
- Feb 2024 · $1.5B · $320M · US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT) · [Lambda's blog](https://lambda.ai/blog/lambda-raises-320m-to-build-a-gpu-cloud-for-ai)

Sacra puts the November 2025 Series E at $5.9B post-money and a 2025 Series D at $2.5B, but no primary report confirms either. Neither the August nor the October 2026 talks have been reported closed.

## Revenue

Sacra estimates Lambda's yearly run rate rose from $505M in September 2025 to $760M at the end of 2025. Reports in August 2026 expected more than $1.5B in revenue for 2026.

- Dec 2025 · $760M · Estimate · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/research/no-side-quests-for-lambda/)
- Sep 2025 · $505M · Estimate · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/research/no-side-quests-for-lambda/)

A run rate is a month's revenue times twelve and isn't audited revenue. An estimate from The Information, cited by Forge, puts revenue at over $520 million for the twelve months to September 2025.

## How Lambda makes money

Lambda rents NVIDIA GPUs by the hour and in reserved clusters. Cloud GPU rental brings in the bulk of its revenue, and legacy hardware sales are a shrinking share, [Sacra says](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/).

Sacra puts its gross margin in the first half of 2025 at about 50%, or roughly 61% without non-cloud lines. Those are Sacra's estimates.

- **H100 on demand.** An NVIDIA HGX H100 instance is listed at $4.59 per GPU per hour, effective November 16, 2026. · [Lambda's pricing page](https://lambda.com/pricing)
- **B200 on demand.** An NVIDIA HGX B200 instance is listed at $7.69 per GPU per hour, from the same date. · [Lambda's pricing page](https://lambda.com/pricing)
- **Reserved clusters.** 1-Click Clusters run from 16 to 2,000+ B200 or H100 GPUs, with reserved capacity priced through its sales team. · [Lambda's pricing page](https://lambda.com/pricing)
- **Long contracts.** Anthropic agreed to spend about $41.3 billion with Lambda over terms into 2034. Fees accrue only as capacity is delivered and accepted. · [SEC (Anthropic S-1/A)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0002130357/000162828026068676/anthropicpbc-sx1ax1.htm)

## Products

Lambda began as Lambda Labs. Its first product, in 2013, was a facial recognition API for Google Glass, which [Sacra says](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/) drove more than 5 million API calls a month. In 2017 it moved into selling AI hardware, including a GPU laptop called the TensorBook.

Today it sells GPU cloud capacity. In November 2026 its website moved to a new address, [lambda.com](https://lambda.com).

- **Superclusters.** Single-tenant NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 clusters with NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand. · [Lambda's website](https://lambda.com)
- **1-Click Clusters.** Production-ready NVIDIA HGX B200 and H100 GPU clusters for distributed AI work. · [Lambda's website](https://lambda.com)
- **Instances.** Self-serve HGX B200 and H100 instances that spin up in minutes. · [Lambda's website](https://lambda.com)

## Customers

Lambda reports serving 200,000+ AI developers and teams, [according to Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/).

A letter to investors showed its backlog grew from $15 billion in June to $50 billion in September 2026 ([TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/ai-computing-startup-lambda-to-raise-4b-ahead-of-planned-ipo/)). Much of that came from one customer, Anthropic.

- **[Anthropic](https://realalpha.app/companies/anthropic/)** signed agreements with Lambda in May, June and August 2026 for compute on NVIDIA GPUs, its IPO filing shows. · [SEC (Anthropic S-1/A)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0002130357/000162828026068676/anthropicpbc-sx1ax1.htm)
- **Anthropic's August 2026 agreement** is about $34.9 billion of the total. Either side may end it if Lambda doesn't secure the facility lease in time. · [SEC (Anthropic S-1/A)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0002130357/000162828026068676/anthropicpbc-sx1ax1.htm)
- **[Microsoft](https://realalpha.app/companies/#microsoft)** signed a multibillion-dollar, multi-year agreement with Lambda in November 2025. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)
- **[Nvidia](https://realalpha.app/companies/#nvidia)** agreed to rent back roughly 10,000 chips under a $1.3B, four-year agreement, plus a $200M deal for 8,000 more, per Sacra. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)

## Leadership

- **[Michel Combes](https://realalpha.app/builders/michel-combes/),** CEO since May 2026. He ran Sprint, SoftBank International and Alcatel-Lucent before Lambda. · [Lambda's leadership page](https://lambda.com/leadership)
- **Stephen Balaban,** co-founder and CTO. He moved to that role when Michel Combes became CEO. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)
- **Michael Balaban,** co-founder and chief product officer. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)

## Who owns Lambda?

Lambda is private and hasn't disclosed who holds what. [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/) says it has raised about $2.36B in equity since 2012.

It also borrows to buy GPUs. It closed a $926 million term loan B in August 2026 and a $1 billion delayed draw term loan in October 2026 ([Business Wire](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250219042887/en/Lambda-Raises-$480M-to-Expand-AI-Cloud-Platform)).

- **TWG Global** led the Series E of over $1.5B in November 2025, with USIT and existing investors. · [Lambda's blog](https://lambda.com/blog/lambda-raises-over-1.5b-from-twg-global-usit-to-build-superintelligence-cloud-infrastructure)
- **US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT)** led the $320 million Series C in February 2024. · [Lambda's blog](https://lambda.ai/blog/lambda-raises-320m-to-build-a-gpu-cloud-for-ai)
- **Nvidia, B Capital and Gradient Ventures** are among its other investors, according to Sacra. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)

## Competitors

Sacra names the large clouds and newer GPU clouds among Lambda's rivals.

- **[CoreWeave](https://realalpha.app/companies/#coreweave),** a public cloud provider that buys GPUs from Nvidia and rents them to AI companies. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)
- **[Amazon Web Services](https://realalpha.app/companies/#aws), Google Cloud and Microsoft's Azure,** the large cloud providers. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)
- **[Together AI](https://realalpha.app/companies/together-ai/),** a newer GPU cloud. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)

## Timeline and latest news

- Nov 2, 2026 · Anthropic's IPO filing disclosed compute agreements with Lambda signed in May, June and August 2026. · [SEC (Anthropic S-1/A)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0002130357/000162828026068676/anthropicpbc-sx1ax1.htm)
- Oct 6, 2026 · Reported in talks to raise up to $4B at a $14.5B pre-money valuation, led by Coatue and Blackstone. · [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/ai-computing-startup-lambda-to-raise-4b-ahead-of-planned-ipo/)
- Oct 1, 2026 · Closed a $1 billion investment-grade delayed draw term loan for GPU infrastructure. · [Business Wire](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250219042887/en/Lambda-Raises-$480M-to-Expand-AI-Cloud-Platform)
- Aug 27, 2026 · Closed a $926 million term loan B backing GPUs for an investment-grade customer. · [Business Wire](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250219042887/en/Lambda-Raises-$480M-to-Expand-AI-Cloud-Platform)
- Aug 2026 · Anthropic signed a $35 billion cloud deal with Lambda, per Reuters and the WSJ. · [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/ai-computing-startup-lambda-to-raise-4b-ahead-of-planned-ipo/)
- Aug 2026 · Bloomberg reported talks to raise up to $3 billion at $12 billion or more. · [Tech Funding News](https://techfundingnews.com/lambda-eyes-12b-valuation-with-3b-pre-ipo-raise-as-ai-cloud-race-heats-up/)
- May 2026 · Hired Michel Combes as CEO. Co-founder Stephen Balaban moved to CTO. · [Lambda's leadership page](https://lambda.com/leadership)
- Jan 2026 · The Information reported a plan to go public in the second half of 2026. · [Forge Global](https://forgeglobal.com/insights/lambda-upcoming-ipo-news/)
- Nov 18, 2025 · Raised over $1.5B in a Series E led by TWG Global. · [Lambda's blog](https://lambda.com/blog/lambda-raises-over-1.5b-from-twg-global-usit-to-build-superintelligence-cloud-infrastructure)
- Nov 3, 2025 · Announced a multibillion-dollar, multi-year agreement with Microsoft. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/)
- Sep 2025 · Hired Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Citi for an IPO, The Information reported. · [Sacra](https://sacra.com/research/no-side-quests-for-lambda/)
- Feb 15, 2024 · Raised a $320 million Series C at a $1.5B valuation, led by USIT. · [Lambda's blog](https://lambda.ai/blog/lambda-raises-320m-to-build-a-gpu-cloud-for-ai)

## Questions people ask

### Is Lambda a public company? Can I buy Lambda stock?

No. Lambda is private and has no ticker, so its shares aren't sold on any exchange. It aims to go public in 2027.

### When will Lambda IPO?

A letter to its limited partners, [reported in October 2026](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/ai-computing-startup-lambda-to-raise-4b-ahead-of-planned-ipo/), says it aims to list in 2027, depending on market conditions. It had planned a 2026 debut and pushed it back.

### Who owns Lambda?

Its investors, including TWG Global, USIT, Nvidia, B Capital and Gradient Ventures. Stakes haven't been disclosed.

### Who is the CEO of Lambda?

[Michel Combes](https://realalpha.app/builders/michel-combes/), hired in May 2026. He replaced co-founder Stephen Balaban, who became CTO.

### Who founded Lambda?

Stephen and Michael Balaban, in 2012.

### How much is Lambda worth?

$1.5B at its last confirmed round, in February 2024. In October 2026 it was [reported](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/ai-computing-startup-lambda-to-raise-4b-ahead-of-planned-ipo/) in talks to raise up to $4B at a $14.5B pre-money valuation. No close has been reported.

### How much revenue does Lambda make?

Reports in August 2026 expected more than $1.5B for full-year 2026, [Tech Funding News](https://techfundingnews.com/lambda-eyes-12b-valuation-with-3b-pre-ipo-raise-as-ai-cloud-race-heats-up/) said. Sacra estimates a $760M run rate at the end of 2025.

### Is Lambda profitable?

[Sacra](https://sacra.com/c/lambda-labs/) estimates a net loss of about $24M in the first half of 2025 and about $175M over the trailing twelve months.

### How does Lambda make money?

Mostly by renting NVIDIA GPUs in its cloud, by the hour or in reserved clusters. Legacy hardware sales are a shrinking share.

### Who are Lambda's customers?

Sacra's estimate, citing Lambda, is that it serves 200,000+ AI developers and teams. [Anthropic](https://realalpha.app/companies/anthropic/) agreed to spend about $41.3 billion with it into 2034, and Microsoft signed a multi-year deal.

## People on Real Alpha

- [Michel Combes](https://realalpha.app/builders/michel-combes/), CEO, Lambda

## How this page is sourced

Each figure links to the filing, company statement or news report it came from, with its date. Run rates are what reporters were told, not audited results; estimates and unconfirmed reports are marked. Quotes are what each person said on the record, with the minute they said it.