AI inference startup Modal Labs in talks to raise at $2.5B valuation, sources say

Gut reaction: Peak valuation for a bet on a bet. Modal solves inference today, but they're banking on LLM providers *not* building competing services. That's wishful thinking.

VC money's still flowing to infrastructure. Good timing, risky thesis. Your survival depends on staying faster than OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Spoiler: you won't.

They're right that inference is the next frontier. They're dead wrong that they're defensible long-term. The moat doesn't exist.