Modal Expands Its European Footprint with a New London Office
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Modal announces its new London office, marking a significant expansion in Europe aimed at serving the growing AI market.
Modal is ramping up its presence in Europe with the opening of a new office in London, signifying a broadened investment strategy in this region. Already recognized for its considerable potential in technology, Europe boasts exceptional talent, innovative startups, and a vibrant ecosystem conducive for Modal's expansion efforts.
History of European Operations
Modal's journey in Europe isn't new; the company has been strategically positioned across the Atlantic for several years. The executive team, including co-founder with roots in Stockholm, Sweden, originally built their expertise at leading firms like Spotify, where foundational systems for user recommendations were developed. The insights gained while growing a startup into a global entity strengthened Modal's vision of what a formidable tech company can achieve.
From the outset, engineers based in Stockholm have significantly contributed to Modal’s development, growing the team to nearly 20 members. They play a crucial role in building essential components of Modal's product, including a custom file system that optimally supports Modal's infrastructure.
Strategic Expansion in London
The new London office aims to enhance Modal's efforts to connect with startups and enterprises throughout Europe, driven by the leadership of Hugh Killingbeck-Jones, who has joined as the Vice President for EMEA. The decision to plant roots in London is predicated on the city’s recognition as a central hub for Artificial Intelligence innovation in Europe. Plans involve expanding the office to include engineering and other vital operational functions as Modal builds its European teams.
Over the past decade, a new wave of European AI firms has emerged, tackling complex challenges in sectors such as robotics, biotechnology, legal, and fintech. Modal recognizes that many of these ambitious companies are likely to rely on its infrastructure as they pursue rapid growth and industry dominance.
Infrastructure and Support
Modal's offerings are designed with scalability in mind to support these emerging companies, allowing them to focus on innovation rather than the complexities of infrastructure management. Modal provides tools for sizable custom model inference, development environments, fine-tuning, training, and execution of batch jobs. The key advantage Modal brings is its ability to facilitate rapid progress through flexible resource consumption and an outstanding developer experience.
Particularly for European companies, understanding local regulations can introduce nuances that differ from those in the United States. Modal is actively investing in capabilities that support these local needs to adapt more smoothly to the regulatory landscape. The company is already set up to comply with many regional requirements, ensuring that clients can leverage advanced AI technologies without regulatory hurdles.
Collaborative Ecosystem
Modal has positioned itself as the infrastructure backbone for pioneering AI companies like Black Forest Labs and Legora, as well as larger platforms such as DoorDash. For instance, Black Forest Labs utilizes Modal to conduct benchmarks across GPU generations for their frontier multimodal models. Legora depends on Modal for developing advanced legal AI systems in isolated environments, enabling rapid and reliable testing. DoorDash manages its AI capabilities across various markets via Modal.
“We're building frontier visual intelligence, and the sooner we can see and evaluate a new checkpoint, the sooner we can adjust recipes and training. Modal lets us pull in a checkpoint and fan sampling out across as many containers as we need, so eval wall time is minimized and training continues uninterrupted.”
“Modal sandboxes give every eval its own isolated environment. We can run thousands of them, trust the results and ship improvements to Legora faster.”
Future Engagement in Europe
Modal is actively hiring talent in sales, solutions engineering, and partnerships in the London office while maintaining momentum in Stockholm's engineering teams which are also expanding. The company plans to engage with the wider community through meetups and conferences in major European cities such as Paris, Berlin, and Tel Aviv to foster connections and explore collaborative opportunities.
- AI Engineer Paris
- NVIDIA GTC Berlin
- Slush in Helsinki
For those in Europe interested in building their projects on the Modal platform, the setup process is streamlined for quick integration. If you're looking to contribute to the development of AI infrastructure in Europe, Modal welcomes you to explore opportunities within its growing ecosystem.
By enhancing its local presence and investment in talent, Modal is setting the groundwork for a successful evolution within the European AI landscape, facilitating innovation and seamless scalability for emerging companies.
