Modular and Qualcomm: The Next Chapter for Unified AI Inference

The infrastructure powering artificial intelligence faces a profound bottleneck at the compiler and software abstraction layer. As the semiconductor industry fragments into specialized architectures, its reliance on proprietary, bespoke software stacks hinders developer velocity and enterprise scale. This infrastructure gap serves as the primary challenge for the next era of global computing.

When Chris Lattner and Tim Davis started Modular in 2022, they set out to build a solution that would provide the infrastructure to support the AI evolution across enterprises. Today the announcement that Modular has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Qualcomm is a tremendous milestone on that journey, and GV is proud to have been an early believer from day one.

Earned Conviction

I first met Chris Lattner after sending him a cold email in 2018. By that time, GV had been investing deeply across the AI / ML infrastructure landscape having led the Series A rounds of LatticeData, SambaNova, and Determined.ai. (We would co-lead Snorkel.ai’s seed round just a few months later)

At our first meeting, we quickly found ourselves deep in the weeds of infrastructure, and I left that meeting with a single note to myself: “Chris is (max) technically impressive. Find a way to work with him in any capacity.”

Chris and I continued to spend time together, often hiking the hills of Los Altos to talk through the future of computing. Years later, he paired with Tim Davis, a brilliant product leader, to build a software layer that could finally resolve the fragmentation plaguing the ecosystem.

Our perspective on AI has been continually shaped by working alongside frontier founders. Looking back, each of our early infrastructure investments served as a critical data point that refined our core thesis:

• Lattice.io (Series A, 2016; acquired by Apple): Underscored the inevitable demand for robust, distributed inference.

• Determined AI (Series A, 2018; acquired by HPE): Exposed the massive software tuning opportunity before massive models scaled.

• Snorkel.ai (Co-led Seed, 2019): Taught us early on that programmatic data labeling would become a critical bottleneck.

• SambaNova (Co-led Series A, 2018): Reaffirmed that ML applications required a fundamental rethink of hardware and software integration.

Navigating these cycles led us to a foundational conviction: while hardware makes raw computing breakthroughs possible, the software layer holds the enduring, defensible value.

Unifying the Stack

When GV led Modular's first financing round in 2022, we recognized that Chris and Tim were prescient architects. They are the definition of "nerd rockstars"—world-class builders whose previous contributions (from Chris creating LLVM, Clang, and Swift to Tim founding TensorFlow Lite) brought on-device machine learning to billions of people.

In that initial round, we proudly advocated for an exceptional group of co-investors who add immense early-stage value: Ram Shriram (Sherpalo), Chris Ré (Factory), Ron Conway (SV Angel), and Saam Motamedi (Greylock). Later, at the Series B, we were delighted to advocate for and partner with Deep Nishar, who led the round.

Four years later, Modular stands out as the most credible software platform sitting directly on top of a heterogeneous mix of next-generation accelerators and traditional compute.

Through the creation of Mojo - a language combining the usability of Python with the performance of systems-level code - and MAX, a universal compiler platform, they have successfully enabled AI models to execute at state-of-the-art performance across diverse hardware.

The maturity of this technology is reflected in the trust placed in Modular by some of the most demanding technical organizations in the world, including top-tier hedge funds running high-frequency trading clusters, hyperscalers managing chip interoperability, and premier semiconductor giants powering internal chip development.

Unstoppable Combination

What makes this team truly exceptional is the complementary partnership between Chris and Tim. Chris is an N-of-1 human - bold, visionary, and technically uncompromising - who convinced us early on that the software layer was the most valuable and defensible frontier in AI infrastructure. He is perfectly balanced by Tim, an elite product leader with a rare ability to abstract deep technical complexity and communicate it with clarity and confidence to the developer community.

Together, they operate with a fiercely independent vision and an innate ability to rally people, allowing them to attract the highest-caliber compiler talent in the world.

The GV team has been deeply honored to support Chris and Tim over the past four years as they scaled their team, expanded their partner network, and built an architecture that drives performance gains exceeding even native platform capabilities. At its core, Modular’s outcome exemplifies what matters most in venture capital: deep domain expertise, unwavering trust, and long-term relationships built with founders from day zero.

I am also immensely proud of how our GV team showed up alongside them - from across the investing team, to talent acquisition, to marketing and communications - providing critical support at key execution milestones. As the industry moves toward a world where AI must run seamlessly across any chip, the foundation built by Chris, Tim, and their team will underpin the next decade of computing. I look forward to watching their next chapter unfold at Qualcomm.