A cloud infrastructure platform for AI has been valued at $15.75 billion after launching in London.
Modal Labs was founded by Swede Erik Bernhardsson, who began his career at Spotify, to allow developers to run AI and machine learning workloads without managing physical servers.
Headquartered in New York, it maintains a base in Stockholm but recently announced a big push into Europe with the opening of an office in London.
Hiring across sales, solutions engineering, partnerships and marketing, Hugh Killingbeck-Jones has joined Modal as VP EMEA to build out the teams in London.
“We think London is the AI capital of Europe, and over time this office will grow to include engineering and other functions too,” wrote Bernhardsson.
With a focus on both startups and enterprise, he added of the opening: “European companies will sometimes have a different set of requirements than US ones, especially when it comes to local regulation.”
Modal has now raised a $750 million Series D round at a $15.75bn post-money valuation, led by Accel.
“Just five months ago, when we announced our Series C, I wrote that demand was accelerating. Since then, usage has tripled and we’ve grown more than 15x year-over-year,” said Bernhardsson.
“We recently crossed $1bn in annualised run rate with no sign of slowing down.
Oxford’s Salience Labs raises £94m to build AI data centre tech
“It’s clear that AI has unlocked a whole new set of software capabilities. So many incredible applications exist now that couldn’t have been built before. The old stack doesn’t quite fit them. They need different building blocks and a new way to think about infrastructure.
“We’re powering a ton of these applications.”
Kleiner Perkins joined the round while all of the firm’s existing investors participated, including Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Redpoint, Lux Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.
Airtel Money launches on LSE – the biggest London IPO in 5 years