Modal, the AI-native infrastructure startup, has closed an $87 million Series B round led by Lux Capital, with participation from existing investors, bringing its total funding to $111 million and post-money valuation to $1.1 billion. The company provides a global, code-first compute platform designed specifically for AI workloads, offering instant access to pooled GPUs and CPUs, serverless usage-based pricing, and sub-second container startups. Its platform supports the full ML lifecycle—from training and inference to batch processing and sandboxed environments—powering customers ranging from cutting-edge biotech applications to generative AI media. The new funding will accelerate Modal’s product expansion, scale its global compute network, and further optimize infrastructure for AI developers, helping teams deploy models faster and more efficiently.
Founded by Erik Bernhardsson (CEO) and Akshat Bubna (CTO), Modal provides a developer-focused platform for running data, AI, and machine learning applications at scale. The company builds and operates its own underlying infrastructure—including custom file systems, container runtimes, and schedulers—to enable fast iteration and seamless scaling from a few CPUs to thousands of GPUs. Modal serves a wide range of use cases, from generative AI and LLM fine-tuning to computational biotech and media processing, with usage-based pricing that charges only for active compute time. Headquartered in New York, Stockholm, and San Francisco, the team includes experienced engineers, product leaders, academic researchers, and creators of widely used open-source projects.
Founded with the goal of simplifying the development and deployment of AI and machine learning applications, Modal has built its own underlying infrastructure from the ground up. This includes a custom file system, container runtime, scheduler, and container image builder. The platform allows developers to scale compute resources from a single CPU to thousands of GPUs, while managing global capacity and providing usage-based pricing.
Modal’s technology is designed to address the growing demands of AI workloads, including generative AI inference, large language model fine-tuning, computational biotech, media processing, and other resource-intensive applications. By pooling global compute resources and providing sub-second container startup times, the company aims to streamline the development process and reduce the overhead associated with managing infrastructure.
The startup’s customer base includes companies working on a wide range of AI applications, from drug discovery to generative media production. Modal has emphasized developer experience as a core principle, allowing teams to iterate quickly and deploy models into production with minimal friction.
With the new funding, Modal plans to expand its product suite, scale its global compute network, and continue refining its platform to meet the evolving needs of AI developers. The company maintains offices in New York, Stockholm, and San Francisco, and its team includes open-source contributors, academic researchers, and experienced engineering and product leaders.
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Read the orginal article: https://arcticstartup.com/modal-raises-87-million-series-b/
