By Deepa Seetharaman

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21 (Reuters) - AI startup Modal raised $355 million in a new round of financing, valuing the company at $4.65 billion, ‌CEO Erik Bernhardsson told Reuters.

AI startups have been whipped by two ‌shifts this year: the surge in AI coding and the increasing scarcity of computing power. ​Modal Labs is confronting both.

The startup helps AI companies access the chips they need to run AI tools, called inference. It also has a sandbox product that allows developers to test their code, increasingly created through AI, before embedding ‌it in their products.

The company's ⁠new round is led by Redpoint Ventures and General Catalyst, which will have a board seat. The Series C round values ⁠the company at $4.65 billion, the company said, up from $1.1 billion in the fall.

The valuation reflects Modal’s surge in revenue, which has spiked in the last six months ​as more ​companies build products with AI code, Bernhardsson ​said on Tuesday. The company’s ‌annualized revenue is about $300 million, up from an annualized rate of $60 million in September.

“Coding for the last six months has been driving everything,” Bernhardsson said, adding that Modal's customers include biotech companies, hedge funds and two weather-forecasting firms.

During that same time frame, however, computational resources have become more expensive and harder ‌to find. Bernhardsson says the company cast ​a wider net and found compute providers ​that he had never heard ​of before. Modal works with 13 cloud companies, up from ‌five last year.

Modal raised cash in ​the Series C round ​in two tranches. The first tranche of investors invested at a $2.5 billion valuation, the company said. But more investors started knocking on Bernhardsson's ​door, leading to the ‌company raising a second tranche at the $4.65 billion valuation. Investors in ​the second tranche include Accel and Menlo Ventures.

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman ​in San FranciscoEditing by Rod Nickel)