Serverless AI infrastructure startup Modal Labs seals $355M funding round
Artificial intelligence startups are facing two massive headaches: There’s too much AI-generated code to deal with, and not nearly enough computing power to run it all on. Modal Labs Inc., which has just raised $355 million in a new funding round, believes it can kill both birds with one stone.
The New York City-based startup says today’s round was led by Redpoint Ventures and General Catalyst, and saw participation from Accel and Menlo Ventures. It brings the company’s valuation to $4.65 billion, up from just $1.1 billion when it last secured funding in September.
The big jump in Modal’s valuation mirrors the lightning-fast rate of AI adoption among enterprises and software companies. Developers are leaning on AI coding tools more than ever in order to increase the speed at which they can update and create new applications, and the resulting velocity has led to a sharp increase in demand for the infrastructure those new apps need to run.
Modal’s platform makes it simple for companies to rent access to the graphics processing units needed for running AI inference workloads, or the process of executing trained AI models. Its serverless infrastructure platform enables developers to deploy AI applications without having to worry about how to manage the underlying cloud servers. All of the management is handled by Modal itself, so developers only have to focus on their app’s performance. The company also offers sandbox environments for developers to test newly generated AI code before running it in production.
