Topic
15 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2021
Modal Functions launched in 2021, found product-market fit in 2023, and now accounts for about two-thirds of Modal's revenue.
“So, Modal Functions was the the the core. We launched that in 2021. Like I mentioned, we started seeing product market fit in 2023, and now, you know, it's about 2/3 of our revenue”
2022
Modal was self-funded for a while and raised a seed round in early 2022.
“But we didn't raise for a while, and, um, uh, until early 2022, we raised a seed round.”
2022
Modal's monthly revenue went from about $100 in November 2022 to about $2,000 the following month, then to roughly $30,000 in January 2023.
“so so we went from, like, you know, $100 a month in, like, I think, like, November 2022, and the next month, we did, like, $2,000 a month.”
2023
Bernhardsson said Modal's first big revenue came from a single customer, which he thinks was a New York Stable Diffusion company called Mage.
“I think they suspected it was a company in in New York called Mage. They're doing, like, a Stable Diffusion company.”
2023
Co-founder Akshat wrote the first Modal Sandboxes prototype and launched it in about one or two days.
“and Akshat wrote a a a prototype and launched it in basically 1 day or 2 days, or something like that.”
2026
Modal works with almost 25 clouds and often must sign multi-year deals with large upfront payments to secure GPU capacity.
“We actually work with almost 25 clouds at this point, and in many cases, the in order to get the capacity we want”
2026
Modal built a dedicated procurement team of about four people who work full time sourcing GPU capacity.
“We have to build a whole procurement, like, desk. Like, we have, like, 4 guys working full time, basically.”
2026
A Modal customer recently needed to transcribe about 5,000 years of audio, a job Modal completed in a few days.
“we had a customer the other day that needed to transcribe, you know, 5,000 years of audio.”
2026
Modal has grown its forward deployed engineering team to about 24 people this year.
“I think we have, like, 24 or something like that. So we've grown a lot.”
2026
Modal recently passed 200 employees and expected to reach about 250 by the end of the year.
“we recently crossed 200 people. We're we're growing extremely fast. We'll probably hit 250 by the end of the year.”
2026
Bernhardsson said the median Modal sandbox lasts about 8 seconds.
“I think the median sandbox in modal today is, like, 8 seconds long or something like that”
Undated
Ramp began using Modal sandboxes for background agents as LLMs improved at generating code.
“and then, you know, companies like Ramp started using Modal for background agents.”
Undated
Modal originally built its sandboxes on the gVisor isolation tool and now also offers full virtual machines.
“previously built our our sandbox product on on GVisor, but now we offer full virtualized machines as well.”
Undated
Anthropic's managed agents let users bring their own sandbox, and Modal can be used for that.
“the managed agents with with Anthropic, uh, there's a sort of, uh, bring your own, um, sandbox, uh, integration. So you you can use Modal for those.”
Undated
Bernhardsson said agents that exploited Hugging Face found a vulnerability in an app deployed on Modal and used it as a springboard, which he says was not a breach of Modal itself.
“the agents running inside, you know, that that that exploited Hugging Face, they discovered a a vulnerability in an app that was deployed on Modal”
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