Ep 95: Modal CEO on the Future of Inference, the Chaos of the GPU Market & Origins of the Sandbox Bet

Jacob Effron and Pat Chase sit down with Erik Bernhardsson, co-founder and CEO of Modal, for his second appearance on Unsupervised Learning, now with the company past a $1B run rate. They dig into how the AI compute market actually works behind the scenes, why Modal’s early bets on sandboxes and low-level infrastructure paid off, and Erik’s takes on NeoClouds, NeoLabs, and where GPU prices are headed next.
(0:00) Intro
(1:26) The Compute Market Today
(5:16) Modal’s Path to LLM Inference
(10:02) Building the Hard Infrastructure
(12:32) Unsolved Problems in Inference
(16:07) Chips & Model Sizes
(21:21) What Wins in Inference
(24:56) Prioritizing a Multi-Product Roadmap
(30:20) Agents as Modal’s Users
(33:19) The Next Big Bet After Sandboxes
(38:58) Robotics & Multimodal Inference
(41:04) Scaling From $2M to $1B
(42:51) NeoClouds & NeoLabs
(48:15) RL as a Service
(51:40) Quickfire
Pat is an AI investor at Redpoint Ventures. He’s led Redpoint’s investments in companies like Modal, Serval & Hex. Follow Pat on Twitter: https://x.com/patrickachase
Jacob is an AI investor at Redpoint Ventures. He's led Redpoint's investments in companies like Abridge, Physical Intelligence & Legora. Follow Jacob on Twitter (@jacobeffron).
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