AI chip startup Etched defies skeptics, hits $10.3B valuation from big-name investors

AI chip startup Etched has secured $300 million in Series C funding, reaching a $10.3 billion valuation and doubling its worth in seven months. The company has developed specialized chips and cluster-scale memory technology designed to significantly speed up AI inference, promising high performance at lower costs. Despite initial skepticism, Etched’s co-founders, who dropped out of Harvard, have successfully manufactured their chips and are now scaling production to meet a billion dollars in booked orders.

• 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.
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