Observed Signal · Sep 2, 2026 · Market Signal · Source: Modal Discovered · Impact: 4/5
Modal is expanding in Europe with our new London office
Modal is expanding, and hiring on all fronts across Europe.
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Connected Companies & Entities
1 Entity mappedRelated Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
AI Inference Startup Fal Doubles Valuation to $16B
Fal, a San Francisco-based AI inference startup, has raised $1.3 billion in a Series F round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Nvidia, Sound Ventures, HOF Capital, and T. Rowe Price. The company also announced a previously closed $350 million Series E round led by Sequoia Capital in April, bringing the combined total to $1.65 billion. The latest funding values Fal at $16 billion, doubling its April valuation of $8 billion. Founded in 2021 by Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven, Fal develops infrastructure for generative media, enabling businesses to run image, video, and audio AI models at scale across entertainment, advertising, e-commerce, gaming, and marketing. The funding will support expansion of its inference infrastructure and team, as well as new AI content creation approaches planned for 2027. Fal has surpassed $800 million in annualized revenue.
Creandum closes €668M fund for early-stage startups
Stockholm-based venture capital firm Creandum has closed its largest fund to date, Creandum VIII, at €668 million ($750 million), surpassing its previous €500 million ($560 million) Fund VII. The fund will support approximately 30 early-stage investments from pre-Seed to Series A over the next two years, with half the capital allocated to new investments and the rest for follow-on rounds. Creandum is focusing on AI-driven opportunities, having recently invested in startups like Lovable, Olix, Modal, and Black Forest Labs. The firm has opened a new office in San Francisco, tripled its team there in the past year, and plans to expand its US presence while maintaining a generalist strategy. The fund secured commitments from about 30 institutional investors across Europe and the US.
SF Compute's Evan Conrad on Programmable Data Centers
In a podcast interview at AI Engineer NYC, Evan Conrad, CEO of SF Compute, discusses the company's evolution from GPU subleasing to a full cloud infrastructure supporting physical settlement of compute contracts. SF Compute operates as a neutral marketplace, matching orders with various constraints like GPU generation, interruption tolerance, and storage, rather than standardizing contracts. The company has moved 5% of its capacity onto an order book, achieving high liquidity for that portion, and has closed several hundred million dollars in volume. Key features include on-the-fly InfiniBand fabric subdivision, making data centers programmable. Conrad emphasizes the importance of physical delivery over cash settlement to avoid market manipulation and basis risk, citing LIBOR as a warning. He argues that NVIDIA, CoreWeave, and hyperscalers cannot operate a neutral exchange due to conflicts of interest, positioning SF Compute as a necessary independent entity.
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