Etched, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence business, has raised $120 million in a Series A fundraising round. The funds will be used to upgrade its specialized processor, which is aimed to improve AI capabilities, especially for models comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
This round’s noteworthy investors include former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel and Replit CEO Amjad Masad. The funding will mostly be used to assist the expensive chip production process, including the “taping out” step, which entails completing chip designs and prepping them for manufacture. Etched has hired Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) for this purpose.
Nvidia presently leads the server AI processor market, accounting for about 80% of sales. Nvidia’s general-purpose AI chips are flexible and powerful, but they use more energy than processors built for specific tasks. Nvidia’s market dominance emphasizes the possibilities for customized chips like as those produced by Etched.
Etched’s engineers are working on developing a chip tailored for the inference stage of AI computing, which creates content and replies. The company’s first chip was designed to operate transformer models efficiently. CEO Gavin Uberti voiced faith in their vision, saying, “If transformers remain relevant, we have the potential to become one of the most significant companies in the industry.”
Although Etched did not disclose its current valuation, the firm was valued at $34 million at its $5.4 million initial investment round in March 2023. This significant series-A investment demonstrates considerable investor confidence in Etched’s creative strategy and commercial potential.
Etched’s mission is to provide a more energy-efficient alternative to current AI processors, possibly changing the AI hardware landscape.