Хиймэл оюун ухааны загваруудыг ажиллуулах дэд бүтцийн үйлчилгээ үзүүлэгч тус компани Accel тэргүүтэй хөрөнгө оруулагчдаас 750 сая долларын хөрөнгө оруулалт авахаар тохиролцоонд ойртсон байна.
Энэхүү санхүүжилтийн үр дүнд Modal Labs-ийн зах зээлийн үнэлгээ дөрвөн сарын өмнөх 4.65 тэрбум доллароос гурав дахин илүү нэмэгдэх төлөвтэй байна. Хиймэл оюун ухааны загваруудыг сургах бус, бэлэн загварыг ажиллуулах (inference) үйлчилгээний эрэлт өсөж байгаатай холбогдуулан Baseten, Fireworks, Fal зэрэг ижил төрлийн үйл ажиллагаа явуулдаг стартапууд ч мөн өндөр үнэлгээтэйгээр хөрөнгө татахаар ажиллаж байна.
2021 онд Эрик Бернхардссон болон Акшат Бубна нарын үүсгэн байгуулсан Modal Labs нь Нью-Йоркт төвтэй бөгөөд 150 орчим ажилтантай. Тус компани хөгжүүлэгчдэд өөрсдийн серверээ удирдах шаардлагагүйгээр хиймэл оюун ухааны загваруудыг сургах, тооцоолол их шаардсан ажлуудыг гүйцэтгэх боломжийг олгодог бөгөөд Cognition, Suno, Ramp, Substack зэрэг компаниудыг үйлчлүүлэгчээрээ ажилладаг.
Компанийн орлого хурдацтай өсөж байгаа ч тооцооллын хүчин чадал түрээслэх зардал өндөр байгаа нь ашигт ажиллагаанд нөлөөлж байна. Тус компани тавдугаар сарын байдлаар жилийн орлогоо 300 сая доллароос давсан гэж мэдэгдэж байв.
Долдугаар сарын сүүлээр Modal Labs нь нэгэн кибер халдлагын үйл явдалд нэр холбогдсон боловч техникийн захирал Акшат Бубна уг асуудал нь компанийн системд бус, харин үйлчлүүлэгчийнх нь кодонд байсан алдаанаас үүдэлтэй гэдгийг мэдэгдсэн билээ. Түүний тайлбарласнаар, үйлчлүүлэгч өөрийн санхүүжилт шаардсан орчинд нэвтрэх хамгаалалтгүй холболт үүсгэснээс болж халдлагад өртсөн бөгөөд Modal Labs-ийн системд ямар нэгэн ноцтой зөрчил гараагүй байна.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
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AI inference infrastructure provider Modal Labs is nearing a $750 million funding round led by Accel at a $15.75 billion valuation that includes the investment, according to a source with knowledge of the funding. The size of the round has not been previously reported, though Axios and Bloomberg have reported other details of the deal.
The new round would more than triple Modal’s valuation from the $4.65 billion it reached when it announced its $355 million previous fundraise just four months ago.
Modal Labs declined to comment.
The deal comes amid soaring demand for inference services, the process of running an AI model that’s already been trained to generate outputs, particularly from customers relying on open-source models. Other inference startups are also in talks to raise fresh capital at much higher valuations. Baseten is nearing an infusion of capital at a $26 billion valuation, doubling what it was worth in June, Bloomberg reported. Meanwhile, Fireworks and Fal, a startup providing inference for video and image generation, have also talked to investors about new rounds that would significantly increase their valuations, according to The Information.
Although revenue for these companies has been growing rapidly, their margins are thin, largely because the cost of acquiring or leasing compute remains very high. Fireworks announced in July that its annualized revenue had hit $1 billion, a fivefold increase from the year before. Multiple inference-focused startups are expected to reach the same revenue milestone by year’s end, according to our source.
Modal was founded in 2021 by CEO Erik Bernhardsson and CTO Akshat Bubna. Bernhardsson, who is Swedish, spent more than 15 years building data teams at companies including Spotify, where he helped build the music-streaming service’s recommendation system, and Better.com, the online mortgage lender, where he served as chief technology officer. Bubna studied math and computer science at MIT and was an early staff engineer at Scale AI, the data-labeling startup, before co-founding Modal.
The company, which is based in New York and estimated to have roughly 150 employees, lets developers train AI models and run other compute-heavy workloads without managing their own servers. Its web page lists customers that include the coding startup Cognition, the AI music generator Suno, the fintech company Ramp, and the publishing platform Substack.
As of May, Modal had surpassed $300 million in annualized revenue, it told Reuters at the time.
The fundraising talks come two months after Modal was pulled into one of the AI industry’s most closely watched security incidents. In late July, Modal disclosed that a customer’s data had been compromised as part of the same hacking campaign carried out by a rogue OpenAI agent against Hugging Face.
Modal Chief Technology Officer Akshat Bubna said the breach traced back to a flaw in a customer’s own code, not to Modal’s systems. “We’re aware a Modal customer published an unauthenticated endpoint that allowed anyone on the internet to use their sandboxes for code execution,” Bubna said in a statement to press outlets at the time. “This was used by the rogue agent. Modal’s platform was not compromised in any way,” he’d added.
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