[gojomo]

If they've figured out how to deliver performance that Python might get around to in 5-10y, shouldn't they tout that, for people who might want that now?

Ultimately promoting the possibility for better performance, & current contrast, is good for prodding other languages/runtimes like Python to match these options. The "important things [get] absorbed" process you mention relies on teams making some "play for" alternatives, to create the impetus to get new things integrated.

[dandiep]

Totally, just trying to understand why this is a $100MM of VC money investment. Is the market that big for this? (Honest question)

[ElectronCharge]

Modular is mainly focused on improving AI related workflows as its business model. That market is easily many $billions, and I think most expect the AI industry to experience explosive growth.

[catgary]

I feel like there’s 100m of VC money here because it’s Chris Lattner’s company and he’s the best compilers person in the world right now.

[nvm0n2]

Most famous in Silicon Valley, maybe?

Kotlin is similar to Swift but arguably compiles much faster despite a suboptimal initial architecture, and avoids weird language/compiler specific problems never before seen, like expressions that time out whilst compiling.

Graal is similar to LLVM but can compile a far larger range of languages, is actually used for both JIT and AOT compilation (does anyone use llvm jit in prod?), and has many innovations LLVM never could have even tried to have.

So it's not really clear that he's the best compiler person in the world. More like, the people doing the other stuff aren't in California so don't get the same level of attention.

[pjmlp]

One of, yes.

Not the best, and already has failures like Swift for Tensorflow.

[Takennickname]

This is an investment in the team not the idea.