Runpod grows from repurposed home GPU rigs to $120M annual revenue run rate

TechCrunch
TechCrunch
1h ago
Runpod founders Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh say their AI app hosting platform has reached a $120 million annual revenue run rate after starting by repurposing Ethereum mining rigs and recruiting early users through Reddit posts.
Runpod grows from repurposed home GPU rigs to $120M annual revenue run rate
A What happened
Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh, former Comcast corporate developers, repurposed Ethereum mining rigs in their New Jersey basements into AI servers and built Runpod to improve the software experience of developing on GPUs. They posted in AI-oriented subreddits offering free access to AI servers for feedback, which led to beta customers, then paying customers, and they said they reached $1 million in revenue within nine months and quit their jobs. The founders said Runpod went nearly two years without funding, never offered a free tier, and formed revenue-share partnerships with data centers to expand capacity. The founders said Runpod later raised a $20 million seed round co-led by the VC arms of Dell and Intel and now has 500,000 developer customers and a $120 million annual revenue run rate.
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Key insights

  • 1

    Reddit posts produced early beta users and paying customers: Lu said the founders posted in AI-oriented subreddits offering free access to AI servers for feedback, and the founders said this led to beta customers and then paying customers.

  • 2

    Capacity and infrastructure constraints shaped the move to data centers: Lu said business users would not run real business workloads on servers in people’s basements, and Singh said users would go elsewhere if Runpod did not have GPU capacity.

  • 3

    Runpod positioned itself as a developer-centric AI cloud platform: Lu said coding would not go away but would change, with programmers becoming AI agent creators and operators, and said Runpod’s goal is to be what the next generation of software developers grows up on.

Takeaways

The founders said Runpod now serves 500,000 developers across 31 global regions and has reached a $120 million annual revenue run rate while planning to raise additional funding.

Topics

Technology & Innovation Artificial Intelligence Business & Markets Startups/VC Cloud & Data

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