AI infrastructure supplier Modular, introduced that the corporate has raised $100 million in a brand new funding spherical led by Normal Catalyst. The spherical additionally noticed participation from present buyers GV (Google Ventures), SV Angel, Greylock, and Manufacturing facility.
The brand new funding follows Modular’s $30 million spherical final June. The corporate claims that its AI infrastructure stack easily integrates into purchasers’ setups with minimal migration bills, natively supporting numerous clouds, {hardware} accelerators, and AI frameworks.
“Our conviction in Modular stems from the crew’s spectacular experience, significantly the co-founders’ pivotal position in shaping the compilation panorama over the previous twenty years and fueling this new wave of AI via their work on TensorFlow,” Deep Nishar, Managing Director at Normal Catalyst, mentioned in a press release.
Modular was based by Chris Lattner (co-founder & CEO) and Tim Davis (co-founder & President) who met one another whereas working at Google.
Lattner has constructed AI and core techniques at outstanding expertise corporations reminiscent of Apple, Google, SiFive, and Tesla.
Likewise, Davis contributed to the founding, improvement and enlargement of serious segments inside Google’s AI infrastructure at Google Mind.
With its infrastructure choices, Modular goals to assist builders defragment their AI expertise stack, speed up new product creation and enhance the accessibility of AI expertise.
The corporate not too long ago launched the Modular Inference Engine to streamline AI deployment.
The engine asserts itself as “the world’s quickest unified AI engine,” appropriate with a number of AI frameworks together with TensorFlow and PyTorch. Whereas presently fine-tuned for CPUs, GPU assist is slated for introduction within the upcoming fall season.
Modular’s Proprietary Programming Language
Moreover, the corporate launched Mojo, an unique programming language tailor-made for AI builders. In its developmental part, Mojo asserts a pace benefit of 35,000 occasions over Python, merging Python’s user-friendliness with the efficiency of C.
Concurrently, Modular has revealed plans for Mojo’s desktop availability alongside a complete developer toolkit. The corporate famous that the potential to run Mojo regionally is probably the most coveted characteristic inside its developer neighborhood.
Modular envisions this characteristic as a catalyst for innovation and collaboration throughout the Mojo developer sphere.
The corporate is providing a preview of the Mojo SDK to early adopters as we speak, with a basic launch deliberate for early September.