Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs Modal

AWS Launches 'Built Together' Community Program for Data Centers

AWS has announced new initiatives to counter criticism over its U.S. data center expansion, including a $1 billion investment over five years for community programs and the 'Amazon Data Center Commitment' with pledges on energy, water, transparency, and employment. It has also ceased using NDAs with government agencies, following Microsoft's similar move. CEO Matt Garman addressed data center 'myths', noting generators run only 10 hours per year and water use is 0.5% of industrial use, while highlighting over $1 billion in community contributions. These actions come amid over 100 proposed moratoriums, some temporary. TechCrunch's Equity podcast debates whether transparency will alleviate backlash, with hosts citing Uber's past secret negotiations as a cautionary tale and Tesla's messaging as another example of poor tech communication.

• AWS invested over $1 billion in communities with data centers over five years.
• AWS stopped using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies for new data centers, following Microsoft's similar announcement.
• AWS data center generators run roughly 10 hours per year (99.9% idle).

Vespa.ai Achieves AWS AI Competency

Vespa.ai announced it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI Competency in the AI Software category. This designation recognizes Vespa as an AWS Partner that helps customers build, deploy, and operate large-scale AI applications on AWS. The Vespa AI Search Platform combines hybrid retrieval, advanced ranking, machine learning inference, and real-time serving in a single platform, reducing infrastructure complexity while providing low latency and scalability for production AI. Vespa is trusted by organizations including Perplexity, Spotify, and Yahoo, powering billions of queries and recommendations across industries such as information platforms, digital commerce, media and advertising, and life sciences. The recognition validates Vespa's expertise in building production AI search applications on AWS.

• Vespa.ai achieved the AWS AI Competency in the AI Software category.
• The designation recognizes Vespa as an AWS Partner for building and operating large-scale AI applications on AWS.
• Vespa AI Search Platform combines hybrid retrieval, advanced ranking, ML inference, and real-time serving.

Startup FinOps: Cloud Cost Optimization Playbook

This playbook outlines practical FinOps steps startups can use to reduce cloud spend without major re-architecture. Key recommendations include making spend visible via enforced cost-allocation tags, scheduling non-production environments to sleep, adding caching and CDNs, cleaning up orphaned resources, rightsizing underutilized compute and databases, and buying commitment discounts (Savings Plans / Reserved Instances) for steady-state baseline usage. The guide recommends measuring cost against business units (e.g., cost per user), validating production changes with metrics, and making a lightweight monthly FinOps review a habit. The author cites typical waste at 25–35% of cloud bills and claims many Series A companies can realize 25–40% savings within 90 days by following these practices.

• Industry data cited: idle resources, over-provisioning, and missed commitment discounts account for roughly 25–35% of the average cloud bill.
• Hosting can consume 6–12% of revenue for early-stage companies, making cloud waste a runway risk.
• Practical low-risk actions recommended: schedule non-production environments to sleep, add caching, route static assets via a CDN, and clean up orphaned resources.

Modal Hits $1B ARR, Raises $750M Series D at $15.75B Valuation

Modal, an AI infrastructure startup, announced it has crossed $1 billion in annualized run rate and raised a $750 million Series D round at a $15.75 billion valuation, led by Accel. The company's usage has tripled since its Series C and grown more than 15x year-over-year. Modal's Sandboxes product, launched in 2023 in response to developers using LLMs to generate code, has become a $300 million run rate product on its own, with nearly 3 billion sandboxes spun up and scaling to a million concurrent. The funding round marks Modal's transition from an infra unicorn to an infra decacorn, positioning it as a key player in the AI infrastructure space.

• Modal raised a $750M Series D at a $15.75B valuation, led by Accel.
• Modal crossed $1B in annualized run rate.
• Usage has tripled since Series C and grown over 15x year-over-year.

Runtime recap: the full keynote, VM Sandboxes, Modal Clusters, and more.

Modal announces a runtime product update with VM Sandboxes and Modal Clusters, as highlighted in a blog post.

Modal Labs closing in on $750M round at $15.75B valuation

AI inference infrastructure provider Modal Labs is nearing a $750 million funding round led by Accel at a $15.75 billion valuation, according to a source. This would more than triple its valuation from $4.65 billion in May. The round comes amid surging demand for inference services, with other startups like Baseten, Fireworks, and Fal also raising at higher valuations. Modal Labs, founded in 2021 by Erik Bernhardsson and Akshat Bubna, provides infrastructure for training and running AI models without managing servers. The company has surpassed $300 million in annualized revenue as of May. The funding talks follow a security incident in July where a customer's data was compromised, but Modal's platform was not breached.

• Modal Labs is nearing a $750 million funding round led by Accel at a $15.75 billion valuation.
• The round would more than triple Modal Labs' valuation from $4.65 billion in May.
• Modal Labs has surpassed $300 million in annualized revenue as of May.