Lambda raising up to $4B at a $14.5B pre-money valuation in its last round before a 2027 IPO
The round is led by Blackstone and Coatue Management, according to a letter to limited partners viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The $14.5B figure is pre-money, so the company would be worth up to about $18.5B if the full $4B comes in. Lambda's order backlog grew from $15B in June to $50B in September, a stretch that included a $35B cloud services agreement with Anthropic. The neocloud last raised a $1.5B Series D in November 2025 at a $5.9B post-money valuation, and earlier this month closed roughly $1B in debt. Michel Combes, formerly of SoftBank International and Sprint, has taken over as CEO, with founder Stephen Balaban moving to CTO. The company runs exclusively on Nvidia hardware and competes with CoreWeave, Nebius, Nscale and IREN. A Lambda spokesperson declined to comment. For builders, the number to watch is backlog versus delivered capacity. A $50B order book means GPU supply is spoken for years out, which keeps spot and reserved pricing firm and makes long-term capacity contracts a competitive edge for anyone training or serving at scale.
