Modular is a Palo Alto–based startup founded in 2022 that builds a platform and tools to develop and optimize AI systems. Its core product is an engine that improves inferencing performance on CPUs and will support GPUs later this year, with the company claiming up to 7.5x speedups versus native frameworks. The engine is compatible with cloud environments, TensorFlow, PyTorch and other accelerator engines and is currently in closed preview. Modular also develops Mojo, a programming language that aims to combine Python-like usability with caching, adaptive compilation and metaprogramming; Mojo is in preview with hundreds of early adopters and is planned for general availability next month. The company has roughly 70 employees, reports a developer community of more than 120,000 and says 30,000 are on its waitlist, with "leading tech companies" already using its infrastructure. Modular plans to use new capital for product expansion, hardware support, expanding Mojo and hiring to scale the team; the company says the funding will not be primarily spent on AI compute. Modular is developing a platform that unifies popular AI framework frontends via modular, composable components to simplify AI system development and deployment. The product aims to let developers plug in custom hardware, scale across hardware, and deploy models seamlessly to edge devices or servers so production “just works.” Founded by former Apple and Google engineers and executives, including CEO Chris Lattner and co-founder Tim Davis, the company positions itself against Big Tech’s proprietary tooling and fragmented toolchains. Modular distinguishes itself from MLOps vendors by focusing on platform-agnostic infrastructure rather than data-labeling or monitoring workflows. The company closed a $30 million seed round and has a 25-person team, with near-term priorities to expand the team and ready the platform for launch in the coming months. Details on product architecture and partnerships remain limited as the company emerges from stealth and is early in development.

Total raised

$130M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Aug 2023