Modal vs Together AI

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.

Introducing Together Link: Run open models inside the harness you already use

Together AI announces Together Link, a new product that allows running open models within existing harnesses, alongside new research blog posts on ThunderKittens for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72, ThunderAgent, and ICML 2026 participation.

Open or Closed AI: Founders' Choices at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

The article previews upcoming discussions at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 (Oct 13-15, San Francisco) on AI model strategy. It highlights how startups increasingly use multiple models—open and proprietary—for different tasks, weighing cost, performance, and flexibility. Sessions feature leaders from Together AI, Pathway, Oumi, Nvidia, and Ricursive Intelligence. Topics include whether to build, customize, or rent AI models, optimizing AI hardware (chip design), and trade-offs between frontier APIs (like OpenAI, Google) and open-weight models. The article emphasizes that model choice shapes product differentiation, infrastructure needs, and long-term business viability. It's a conference promotion with substantive insights on AI architecture decisions.

• TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 takes place Oct 13-15 at Moscone West, San Francisco.
• The conference features 200+ sessions, 250+ speakers, and 300+ exhibiting startups.
• Sessions cover multi-model strategies, custom model development, and AI-designed hardware.

Together AI Product Team Shares AI-Native Workflow Stack

Together AI's product team, including CPO Charles Zedlewski and PMs Necoline Hubner and Pavneet Ahluwalia, outlined their AI-native product development stack in a podcast. The stack comprises four components: a shared context repository accessible by any AI harness, skills for feature research and PRD writing, an orchestrator for leadership, and agent evals. The team emphasizes collective productivity over individual gains, using multiple models like GLM and Kimi instead of relying solely on Anthropic. They validate products through agent-based tests, checking if AI agents can complete tasks using their documentation and API. The article also highlights Together AI's $8.3 billion valuation from its Series C round.

• Together AI is valued at $8.3 billion.
• Together AI's product team uses a four-component AI-native stack: shared context repo, skills, orchestrator, and agent evals.
• The team uses multiple AI models (e.g., GLM, Kimi) rather than only Anthropic's models.