# Erik Bernhardsson

> Erik Bernhardsson is the founder and CEO of Modal Labs, a serverless cloud platform that gives AI engineers on-demand GPU compute with sub-second container starts. A Swedish engineer trained in physics at KTH, he built the first version of Spotify's music recommendation system (including the groundwork behind Discover Weekly), open-sourced the widely used Luigi and Annoy libraries, then ran a 300-person engineering org at Better.com before starting Modal in 2021. He is also a prolific blogger whose essays on engineering, data teams, and startups reach a large technical audience. In 2026 Modal raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Modal Labs
- **Organizations:** Modal Labs, Better.com, Spotify, Google
- **From:** Solna, Sweden
- **Nationality:** Swedish
- **Education:** M.Sc. in Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
- **Known for:** Built the first version of Spotify's music recommendation system, including groundwork for Discover Weekly, Radio and Related Artists, Created and open-sourced Annoy, a widely used approximate nearest neighbor library, Created and open-sourced Luigi, a workflow engine with 10,000+ GitHub stars and 200+ contributors

## Career timeline

- **2003** — Won a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics
- **2008** — Joined Spotify in Stockholm, working across data and analytics
- **2011** — Moved to New York to build and lead Spotify's machine learning team
- **2011-2015** — Built the first version of Spotify's music recommendations (Related Artists, Radio, Discover Weekly); open-sourced Luigi and Annoy
- **2015** — Left Spotify to join Better.com, eventually running its ~300-person engineering team as CTO
- **2021** — Founded Modal Labs to build data and compute infrastructure
- **2025** — Modal raised an $87M Series B at a $1.1B valuation, led by Lux Capital
- **2026** — Modal raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures

## Achievements

- Built the first version of Spotify's music recommendation system, including groundwork for Discover Weekly, Radio and Related Artists
- Created and open-sourced Annoy, a widely used approximate nearest neighbor library
- Created and open-sourced Luigi, a workflow engine with 10,000+ GitHub stars and 200+ contributors
- Founded and scaled Modal Labs to a $4.65B valuation by 2026
- Gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics (2003)
- Two-time ACM-ICPC World Finals participant
- Named to the Redgate 100 most influential in the database community (2022)

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — Modal raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, roughly quadrupling its Series B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures.
- **2025-09** — Modal announced an $87M Series B at a $1.1B valuation, led by Lux Capital.

## Links

- Website: https://erikbern.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikbern/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/bernhardsson
- GitHub: https://github.com/erikbern

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/erik-bernhardsson
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-17