Is AI Compute Broken? Tim Davis on Modular’s $130M Bet

Would you leave a stable, high-paying job at Google to build something that competes with NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD? That’s exactly what Tim Davis, co-founder and president of Modular, did. Since then, his company has raised $130M to reimagine AI compute infrastructure — but are AI startups really desperate for a new compute layer? And what’s it like to build a startup when your biggest competitors are trillion-dollar giants? In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Tim shares his vision for the future of AI compute, why talent is the real key to success, and some of the tough lessons he’s learned from three startups.

RUNTIME 46:27 EPISODE BREAKDOWN

(1:26) “We are building a new accelerated execution platform for compute.”

(6:41) “ It will exist all over the place and it already does, but AI will be everywhere that compute is.”

(11:18) “ You only you only have so much time in a week. What is the thing that you're best at?”

(15:13) “ We have decided to start from the hardest part of the software stack.”

(22:44) “For the most talented people in the world, the risk is actually not as great as what you think.”

(30:24) “ Growing up in Australia, my view of the of the United States was very much driven from the media and from Hollywood.”

(33:26) “ I sat in a room for six weeks and just met everyone that I could. And that really was the beginning of a journey to the United States.”

(37:48) “ I still think there's a special place in the Bay Area, and in the United States, there is a different risk appetite.”

(40:41) The one question Tim would have to ask the CEO before he’d take a job at someone else’s early-stage startup.

LINKS

• Tim Davis, co-founder, president
  • timdavis.com
• Chris Lattner, co-founder, CEO
• Modular
• AI startup Modular raises $100 mln in General Catalyst-led funding, 8/24/2023, Reuters 

SUBSCRIBE

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fund-build-scale/id1719488387

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0EbC8PTUSfpZ4USPC9ErnN

📥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7249143254363856897/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/

Thanks for listening!

– Walter.