Modal will add Nvidia Vera CPUs to its cloud infrastructure for AI agent workloads after internal tests showed roughly twice the throughput of the AMD and Intel processors it uses today. Modal provides cloud infrastructure that lets AI developers deploy agents capable of carrying out complex operations autonomously over extended periods. Those workloads need substantial CPU resources for software execution and data processing that GPUs handle inefficiently.
Modal currently relies exclusively on AMD and Intel processors for those tasks. Vera is built on an Arm instruction set architecture, so adopting it will require substantial changes to Modal's software. Modal nonetheless concluded that the potential performance gains justify the added engineering work.
The reported 2x advantage is notable because agentic AI workloads can involve many independent tasks competing for CPU cores, cache capacity and memory bandwidth. Modal has not disclosed detailed benchmark configurations, the specific AMD and Intel processor models used, or performance-per-watt figures. It is therefore unclear whether Vera's edge comes from its Arm v9.2-based Olympus CPU cores, which can decode and execute up to 10 instructions per cycle, its memory subsystem with 1.2 TB/s of bandwidth, or other architectural characteristics. The tests also compared Vera against currently available AMD and Intel processors, not the upcoming generations that will compete with Vera in the coming years.
Modal chief executive Erik Bernhardsson said the company cannot port all of its software to Arm overnight and will continue using x86 CPUs from AMD and Intel. Modal intends to run a heterogeneous server fleet and pick the most suitable processor for each workload rather than standardizing on one ISA. The company also plans to evaluate upcoming AMD and Intel processors once they are available.
For Nvidia, the agreement is a major step toward establishing Vera as a standalone server processor with a significant share of the server market. Nvidia expects Vera sales to generate at least $20 billion in its current fiscal year and puts the potential total available market for these CPUs at approximately $200 billion. The company is on track to sell at least four million Vera CPUs in fiscal 2026.
The announcement follows Modal's $750 million financing round led by Accel, which valued the company at $15.75 billion. Modal expects annual revenue to reach $1 billion within the next year. Service consumption has risen 3X over the last 12 months, while revenue has surged more than 15 times compared with the previous year, according to Reuters.
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