AI inference chip startup Etched has raised $300 million in a Series C funding round, boosting its valuation to $10.3 billion. The round was led by Sequoia, with significant participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Jane Street, Blackstone, and strategic investor SK Hynix. This latest financing brings the company's total raised capital to approximately $1.1 billion.
Founded in 2022 by Harvard dropouts, Etched designs specialized chips, called ASICs, that are purpose-built for running AI models, a process known as inference. The company's goal is to provide a more power-efficient and cost-effective alternative to the general-purpose GPUs that currently dominate the market, such as those from Nvidia. The new funds are intended to scale production and accelerate customer deployments of its hardware.