AI startup Etched discusses financing, aiming for post-money valuation of US$20 billion
According to people familiar with the matter, Etched, a start-up company that develops AI chips against Nvidia, is advancing a new round of financing, led by old shareholder Jane Street Capital. The company's valuation may triple to approximately US$20 billion. People familiar with the matter said that thanks to the current investment boom in artificial intelligence start-ups in the venture capital market, the San Jose, California-based company is also simultaneously advancing another round of independent financing, led by Sequoia Capital, with a corresponding valuation of US$10 billion. Both financings have not yet been completed, and the terms of the transaction are still subject to change. Under the boom of the artificial intelligence industry, two consecutive rounds of financing have become increasingly common in Silicon Valley. Many start-ups first sell part of their equity at a certain valuation and then complete a new round of fundraising at a significantly higher valuation in a short period of time. This phenomenon shows that leading AI companies have stronger bargaining power, and various investment institutions are vying to enter the market. Etched said that the company has self-developed dedicated chips for AI model reasoning scenarios. Information on its official website shows that the first chip design has entered the testing stage, and the company is advancing product verification work to undertake customer orders totaling US$1 billion. NVIDIA is the current leader in the AI chip industry, and the success of Cerebras and Groq has spawned a large number of start-up companies to attack NVIDIA's industry monopoly. A large number of emerging companies are focusing on the inference chip track, including British start-ups Fractile and SambaNova. NVIDIA's core advantage lies in the powerful performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) in AI model training. Etched was co-founded in 2022 by Gavin Uberti, Chris Zhu and Robert Wachen. Early investors include Stripes Investment Company, Peter Thiel, Ribbit Capital and Primary Venture Partners.