Nvidia has broken into the server central processor market long controlled by Intel and AMD. According to Reuters, AI cloud services startup Modal said it will adopt Nvidia's new Vera central processor for the first time to host AI agents; previously Modal's computing rental services ran entirely on Intel and AMD chips.
Modal just completed $750 million in financing led by Accel last week, at a valuation of $15.75 billion. The company said its service usage has tripled and revenue has grown more than 15-fold year over year, and it expects revenue to reach $1 billion in the next year. Modal said early testing showed the new chip doubled the workload of AI agents, prompting the company to decide to support Nvidia's chip design for the first time, which required deep modifications at the software layer.
Chief Executive Officer Erik Bernhardsson emphasized that the company will not abandon its existing suppliers and will in the future adopt a mixed hardware approach of Nvidia, Intel and AMD, letting each task run on the hardware that performs best.
Nvidia has told investors it expects Vera chip sales of at least $20 billion this fiscal year, and its estimate for the size of the entire central processor market is about $200 billion. Nvidia said companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Oracle and Perplexity also plan to adopt the chip.