Erik Bernhardsson

ClickHouse is a very good product imo!

@moinnadeem @swyxio @sarahcat21 @akshat_b Not exactly, but we realized pretty quickly that the capacity in a single region/cloud wasn’t enough

@bernhardsson @swyxio @sarahcat21 @akshat_b Did you always plan on doing aggregation and abstraction over multiple clouds from the beginning?

Many people don’t know that before there was Modal, there was Polyester, a vision to solve “any data problem” through better infrastructure. Specifically, @bernhardsson and @akshat_b believed that most infrastructure delivered scalability and reliability, but sacrificed developer productivity. They believed data and AI teams deserved amazing tools and workflows that could turbocharge them. The entry point to deliver this vision was clear: figure out how to run code. 6 years later, that vision hasn’t really changed. Yes, the needs of AI engineers are evolving every single day. Yes, they need even more scalable, more reliable, more performant systems. But Modal’s commitment remains the same: give data and AI folks tools that feel good and make them deliver deeper impact faster. Proud that I convinced them to change the name; proud that they raised a sh#t ton of cash; proud that every time Erik shares a revenue plan, I balk, and then he beats it by over 100%, and grateful to learn from Erik, Akshat, and the Modal team throughout this journey.

We're honored to deepen our partnership with @modal and co-lead their $355M Series C! When @bernhardsson and @akshat_b started Modal in 2021, they had conviction that building a truly great cloud for AI meant rebuilding the entire stack from the ground up. Five years later, that bet has paid off. Erik built the recommendation system behind Discover Weekly at Spotify. Akshat was an early engineer at Scale AI before joining Erik as co-founder and CTO. Together, they've assembled what one engineer affectionately calls "a monastery for super nerds" and it shows in the product. Modal has become the high-performance cloud that serious AI teams reach for when they need to ship. We couldn't be more excited to continue backing them. Huge congratulations to Erik, Akshat, and the entire Modal team!

@pgillian____ @barrald @modal Yes!! Thank you so much for the kids words friend!

@barrald @bernhardsson @modal this is a great post barry!

A few years ago I went on a walk with @bernhardsson around NYC, when he explained the ideas that became @modal. I was energized by his technical depth and vision, but also... uncertain about how big this could get. Cloud compute primitives already exist... what's the long-term edge? Well, it turns out the answer was "insanely strong execution, deep customer empathy, and showing up at the perfect moment for agents" – and their parabolic growth proves what's possible when you put all of that together. Seeing @modal's journey as a friend, angel investor, and customer has been wild and inspiring and I'm so so pumped for them!

fyi we have gpus

Btw! If you want to build the future of AI infrastructure, we’re hiring: modal.jobs

Today we're announcing our Series C funding: $355M at a $4.65B valuation, led by some great investors @generalcatalyst and @Redpoint. We've had insane growth in the last year, but we're still very early. So proud of the team and what we have built so far!

I love Simon because he’s a cool dude and he let me invest. I hate him because he makes me and every other CEO look like we’re spending money like MC Hammer.

Exciting collaboration with @modal and @claudeai to build AI agents for our merchants!

Great chat with @ypatil125 about the future of reinforcement learning 🤖

@bjornjeffery @martin121 @henrikt @asarrafi @wlundborg @olasars @modal It's disappointingly small imo. Spotify's diaspora should have accomplished a lot more by now!

@martin121 @henrikt @asarrafi @wlundborg @olasars @modal @bernhardsson Modal is top of my list. Neko, if you’re being generous. But I’d say the list is actually very short?

Article in Fast Company about Spotify alumnis including quotes from @henrikt @asarrafi @wlundborg @olasars. The article and mentions _could_ have been like 10 times longer I guess and include other unicorns, entrepreneurs and doers, but fun to see! Happy also to have worked with so many bright and fun people - history is still being written. PS -Spotify is celebrating 20 years this spring so looking forward to catch up with peeps at an upcoming reunion party. fastcompany.com/91543265/how-t…

@moinnadeem :)

@bernhardsson Uh Erik should I spend more money on modal?

I hate to break this to all the people with strong opinions but the correct answer to almost every question is “it depends”

@can @DoorDash @modal They really delivered too!

the folks at @doordash cooked here (get it??!!) by using @modal

@samlambert git-of-theseus, what kind of garbage is that

I used Cursor and git-of-theseus to analyze the Vitess codebase. It's conclusion: Vitess today is mostly a 2021+ codebase in terms of lines that blame back to those years--not because the project is young (first commit Feb 2012), but because of heavy churn and expansion in the last few years.

We're partnering with an up-and-coming startup called @AnthropicAI for this. I'm bullish – I think they could be big one day!

@hamiltonulmer en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridg…

@bernhardsson I have found "no" to also work pretty well a non-trivial % of the time

@JaisonBuilds My guess is that drug and alcohol use also increases risky behavior and may actually not have a big impact on TFR in the same way.

@bernhardsson Phone addiction operates on the same neural pathways as any other addiction. If your logic was true (natural selection will remove addicts from the gene pool) then drug addictions shouldn't really exist today. Phones take advantage of reward pathways required for human survival

My optimistic take on this is that evolution will take care of this. There’s a bunch of genes that cause phone addiction (very simplified) and those genes are basically going to go to zero in the next 50 years.

@amitpr @graphite @astral_sh @StainlessAPI 🤷🏼

@bernhardsson @graphite @astral_sh @StainlessAPI 6-7? sorry

There’s like 6-7 NYC infra founders I occasionally get drinks with and ~50% of them just got acquired: - @graphite - @astral_sh - @StainlessAPI Congrats!! 🍻