tech
AI chip startup Etched defies skeptics, hits $10.3B valuation from big-name investors
Etched, founded by three Harvard dropouts, has created new chips and memory components that speed up inference on any AI model -- no GPUs required, it says.
TL;DR
- Etched, an AI chip startup, closed a $300 million Series C funding round at a $10.3 billion valuation.
- The round was led by Sequoia, with participation from other major investors like Andreessen Horowitz and SK Hynix.
- Etched has doubled its valuation in approximately seven months, previously valued at $5 billion in December.
- The company has successfully manufactured its own chips and is testing full systems with clients, having booked $1 billion in orders.
- Etched's systems are designed to run any AI model, including transformer and state-space models, not just specific LLMs.
- Their innovation lies in two new components: a prefill chip operating at lower voltage for faster processing and cluster-scale memory for efficient interconnectivity.
- The founders, who dropped out of Harvard in 2022, faced skepticism but have grown the company to 400 employees with expanded data center facilities.