Nvidia wins fast-growing AI startup Modal for new central processors
By Stephen Nellis SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 19 (Reuters) Nvidia has won central processor chip business with another fast-growing AI startup that until now relied entirely on chips from Intel and AMD, an early sign that its push into a market long controlled by those two rivals has traction. Modal, a cloud-computing startup that rents out computing power to AI developers, said it plans to start using Nvidia s new Vera central processor for the first time for hosting agents, the AI systems that can carry out long-running tasks for human users. Modal until now has run such work only on Intel and AMD chips. Modal last week raised $750 million in a funding round led by Accel at a $15.75 billion valuation, saying it is on track to record $1 billion in sales over the next year. Modal said usage of its services has tripled and revenue has grown more than 15 times year-over-year. Modal said Monday that early tests showed the new Nvidia chip doubled the amount of work that AI agents can get