Nvidia has won Modal, a fast-growing cloud startup that rents computing power to AI developers, as a customer for its new Vera central processor — a chip category Nvidia has never owned before. Why it matters: Modal ran agent hosting only on Intel and AMD CPUs until now, and says early Vera tests doubled the work its AI agents could get done.
October 19, 2026
What happened
Modal said on Monday it plans to start using Nvidia’s Vera central processor for the first time, for hosting AI agents — systems that carry out long-running tasks for users. Supporting Vera will require deep software changes on Modal’s side, which makes the decision a real commitment, not a trial logo.
Modal is not a small test case. Last week it raised $750 million in a round led by Accel at a $15.75 billion valuation, said it is on track for $1 billion in sales over the next year, and reported that usage of its services has tripled while revenue has grown more than 15 times year over year.
A mixed fleet, not a switch
Chief Executive Erik Bernhardsson stressed that Modal is not abandoning Intel or AMD. The company will run Vera alongside its existing chips in a mixed fleet, putting each job on whatever hardware runs it best.
He also noted a fair caveat: Modal’s tests compared Vera against Intel and AMD chips already on the market, and both rivals have newer models coming that could narrow the gap. Modal says it will test those when they are available.
Nvidia’s CPU bet
Reuters reports Nvidia has told investors it expects at least $20 billion from Vera sales this fiscal year, in a market it values at roughly $200 billion. Nvidia has previously said OpenAI, Anthropic, and Oracle also plan to use the chips, along with startups such as Perplexity.
CPUs still do much of the unglamorous work around AI — running agent loops, tools, and ordinary code — even when GPUs get the headlines. That is the business Intel and AMD have owned for decades.
Why it matters
This is an early, concrete sign that Nvidia’s push into CPUs has traction with a demanding, independent buyer — not just with its closest partners. Modal’s mixed-fleet approach is the realistic version of the story: Vera does not need to replace Intel and AMD everywhere to become a large business, it just needs to win the agent-hosting jobs where it is fastest. Watch whether other cloud platforms report the same doubling on their own workloads.
Frequently asked questions
What is Nvidia Vera?
Vera is Nvidia’s new central processor (CPU), designed to sit alongside its GPUs and handle general-purpose and agent-hosting work.
What did Modal find in its Vera tests?
Modal said early tests showed Vera doubled the amount of work AI agents could get done, compared with the Intel and AMD chips already on the market that it tested against.
Is Modal dropping Intel and AMD?
No. Modal says it will run Vera in a mixed fleet alongside Intel and AMD chips, and will test their newer models when they arrive.
Sources: Reuters (October 19, 2026)