AI chip startup Etched defies skeptics, hits $10.3B valuation from big-name investors
AI chip startup Etched has raised $300 million in a Series C funding round, reaching a $10.3 billion valuation. The company specializes in hardware designed specifically for transformer-based AI models and other architectures like Mamba.
Why it matters
This massive valuation highlights the intense investor appetite for specialized AI hardware that can outperform general-purpose GPUs in running large language models.
Etched, the AI chip startup founded by three Harvard dropouts in 2022, has closed a $300 million Series C funding round at a $10.3 billion valuation, co-founder and COO Robert Wachen tells TechCrunch.
The round was led by Sequoia, with Andreessen Horowitz, SK Hynix, Jane Street, and Diffusion Capital also participating, along with other, earlier investors. Other backers of the company include names like Peter Thiel, Andrej Karpathy, Dylan Field, Amjad Masad, and more.
Etched was previously valued at $5 billion in December when it raised a $500 million round, meaning it has doubled its valuation in about seven months. The company says this is the highest valuation ever for a Sequoia-led Series C. Last month, Etched announced that it had successfully manufactured its homegrown chips , that its first full systems were being tested by clients, and it had already booked $1 billion worth of orders.
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