Key facts
- AI chip startup Etched has booked $1 billion in contract orders for its "frontier inference clusters."
- The company closed a $500 million funding round in December at a $5 billion post-money valuation.
- Etched has raised a total of $800 million to date.
- The startup's systems are designed to accelerate AI model inference.
- Notable investors include VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, Ribbit Capital, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Peter Thiel.
Nvidia competitor Etched has announced significant progress, including $1 billion in contract orders for its AI inference chips and a $5 billion post-money valuation following a $500 million funding round closed in December. The startup, founded in 2022 by Harvard dropouts Gavin Uberti and Robert Wachen, aims to accelerate AI model inference with its specialized "frontier inference clusters," which bundle chips with custom racks and software.
Etched has now raised a total of $800 million. The company's investor list includes prominent venture capital firms like VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, and Ribbit Capital, as well as angel investments from AI luminaries such as Andrej Karpathy, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Arthur Mensch, and Scott Wu. Billionaires Stanley Druckenmiller and Peter Thiel are also listed on the cap table.
Despite the company's current momentum, founders Uberti and Wachen faced significant investor skepticism in 2023, reportedly operating month-to-month and struggling to secure interest for specialized AI chips. This contrasts sharply with the current market environment, where AI-related investments, particularly in chip technology for inference, are highly sought after. Competitors like Cerebras have seen successful IPOs, Groq recently raised $650 million, and major tech companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and even OpenAI are developing their own custom AI chips.