Erik Bernhardsson, co-founder and chief executive of Modal, sits down to argue that inference, not training, is where the durable AI infrastructure business sits, and that it increasingly resembles the cloud market that came before it. Modal has raised more than $1.2B, including a $750M Series D led by Accel at a $15.75B valuation, and Bernhardsson says the company has passed $1B in annual recurring revenue.
The conversation covers how he forecasts GPU demand growing 30-40% month over month, why he thinks early-stage startups do not really have moats, and why chasing the highest possible valuation at each round is often a mistake.
