AI hosting startup Runpod reaches $120M annual run rate

Runpod, an AI app hosting platform that launched four years ago, has reached a $120 million annual revenue run rate, founders Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh told TechCrunch. The founders say the company began when they converted GPU rigs they had built for Ethereum mining into AI servers in late 2021, after finding the software stack for GPUs “really god-awful.” They posted on Reddit in early 2022 offering free access for feedback, which led to beta users and paying customers; within nine months they had quit their jobs and reached $1 million in revenue, the founders said.

Runpod grew by forming revenue-share partnerships with data centers rather than taking on debt, the founders said. VC Radhika Malik first noticed them on Reddit, and the company later closed a $20 million seed round co-led by the VC arms of Dell and Intel with participation from investors including Nat Friedman and Hugging Face co-founder Julien Chaumond, who the founders say reached out after using the product.

By May 2024 the company had about 100,000 developers; the founders now say Runpod serves 500,000 developers across 31 regions and counts customers such as Replit, Cursor, OpenAI, Perplexity, Wix and Zillow. The founders said they have not raised more money since the seed and are planning a Series A.

Key Topics

Tech, Runpod, Zhen Lu, Pardeep Singh, Reddit, Dell Technologies Capital