tech
Nvidia competitor Etched hits $5B valuation, $1B in sales for AI chip
Nvidia AI chip competitor Etched says it has already booked $1 billion under contract for the inference systems powered by its chip.
TL;DR
- Etched, an Nvidia AI chip competitor, has secured $1 billion in contract orders for its inference systems.
- The company's inference systems include custom chips, racks, and software.
- Etched aims to make AI inference faster, cheaper, and more power-efficient.
- The startup raised $800 million in total funding, with a recent $500 million round in December valuing it at $5 billion.
- Notable investors include VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, Ribbit Capital, Stripes, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Peter Thiel.
- Angel investors include AI figures like Andrej Karpathy, Geoffrey Hinton, and Fei-Fei Li.
- Etched co-founders Gavin Uberti and Robert Wachen dropped out of Harvard and became Thiel fellows.
- The company faced early investor skepticism but now benefits from the AI boom.
- The AI chip market is competitive, with companies like Cerebras and Groq also seeing significant investment and activity.