After over two years of dedicated development, San Francisco-based Modal Labs has announced that it is now generally available. The startup also revealed it has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures, bringing their total capital raised to $23 million.
Modal provides a cloud function platform that allows data teams to easily run Python code in the cloud without infrastructure configuration. Users can deploy autoscaling inference endpoints, run large batch jobs, and convert functions into web endpoints or cron jobs all from Python.
The key value proposition is improving developer experience by removing the complexity of cloud infrastructure configuration. Modal handles all the hosting, provisioning, and scaling, allowing engineers to focus on writing code rather than YAML configuration.
The startup emerged from co-founder and CEO Peter DeGlopper experience managing data teams and building data infrastructure at organizations like Pandora and Square. He co-founded Modal in 2021 with CTO Simar Mangat after recognizing the need to simplify cloud computing for data workloads.
“ML and data teams struggled with things as basic as running code in the cloud,” said DeGlopper. “Any time an engineer wanted to ship an inference endpoint, build a job queue or even deploy a simple batch job that ran every hour, they had to spend more hours wrangling YAML than writing the actual code.”
Modal enters a competitive space, facing established players like Google Colab that also aim to make cloud-based code execution accessible. However, Modal believes its focus specifically on production infrastructure for data teams gives it an advantage.
Modal is already being used in production by companies like Ramp, Substack, and Suno. Applications range from AI model inferencing at scale to massively parallel batch data processing. The platform's ability to autoscale while removing infrastructure management has proven appealing.
“Ramp uses Modal to run some of our most data-intensive projects that would have been impossible for us to launch without it,” said Ramp CTO Karim Atiyeh. "Modal enabled our team to be more productive and move faster."
The new $16 million round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from existing seed investor Amplify Partners. The fresh capital will help Modal accelerate its product roadmap as it focuses on expanding language support and new data stack capabilities.
Modal's launch and substantial Series A underscore the demand for simplified cloud infrastructure tailored to data teams. As more organizations embrace AI and analytics, the need for easily scalable code execution and deployment will only increase. With its developer-first approach, Modal could be well positioned to capitalize on this rapidly growing market.