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. Nvidia AI chip competitor Etched issued a progress report on Tuesday, after TSMC successfully manufactured its chip earlier this year. The startup says it has already booked $1 billion in contract orders for its product: full systems powered by those chips.
Key Takeaways
- Etched is currently in the process of testing that first product with customers.
It calls these systems "frontier inference clusters," bundles that include the chips along with custom-designed racks and software, all built to help frontier models run inference faster, more cheaply, and with better power efficiency than rivals, Etched claims.
- The most recent tranche was an unannounced $500 million round closed in December at a $5 billion post-money valuation, the company said.
The startup has attracted a notable group of investors, too, including VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, and Ribbit Capital.
- Both dropped out of Harvard and became Thiel fellows to found Etched, as Uberti told TechCrunch at the time.
By 2024, Etched was already on investors' radar, having raised more than $125 million.
- Today's funding environment looks like a different planet by comparison.
Investors are chasing everything AI-related, especially chip technology that speeds up inference.
- Join 1,000+ founders and VCs at all stages for real-world scaling insights and connections that move the needle.
Stats & Key Facts
- #Nvidia AI chip competitor Etched says it has already booked $1 billion under contract for the inference systems powered by its chip.
- #Nvidia AI chip competitor Etched says it has already booked $1 billion under contract for the inference systems powered by its chip.
- #The startup says it has already booked $1 billion in contract orders for its product: full systems powered by those chips.
- #) Etched, founded in 2022, also revealed that it has now raised a total of $800 million to date.
Etched is currently in the process of testing that first product with customers. It calls these systems "frontier inference clusters," bundles that include the chips along with custom-designed racks and software, all built to help frontier models run inference faster, more cheaply, and with better power efficiency than rivals, Etched claims. (Inference is what happens after a user submits a prompt - it's currently the biggest bottleneck, and the biggest cost center for AI companies trying to serve customers at scale, which is exactly why investors are paying attention to anyone promising to solve it.
) Etched, founded in 2022, also revealed that it has now raised a total of $800 million to date. The most recent tranche was an unannounced $500 million round closed in December at a $5 billion post-money valuation, the company said. The startup has attracted a notable group of investors, too, including VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, and Ribbit Capital.
It has also secured angel investment from AI heavyweights including Andrej Karpathy, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Arthur Mensch, and Scott Wu. The cap table also includes billionaires Stanley Druckenmiller and Peter Thiel. Although the startup's press release frames Tuesday's announcement as Etched "coming out of stealth," co-founders - CEO Gavin Uberti and president Robert Wachen - have actually been talking to TechCrunch about their chip plans since 2024.
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
Continue Learning
Comments
Sign in to join the conversation