On June 25, 2024, the AI chip startup headquartered in Cupertino, California, USA,Etchedannounced it has raised $120 million in Series A funding, led by Primary Venture Partners and Positive Sum Ventures, with support from institutional investors including Hummingbird, Fundomo, Fontinalis, Lightscape, Earthshot, Two Sigma (strategic investor), and Skybox Data Centers (strategic investor), as well as angel investors such as Peter Thiel, Thomas Dohmke, Cruise, Kyle Vogt, and Charlie Cheever.
The company plans to use the raised funds to design and develop a new AI chip called Sohu.
Etched was founded in 2022 by three Harvard dropouts, Robert Wachen, Gavin Uberti, and Chris Zhu, to design and manufacture the AI chip Sohu dedicated to Transformer models. The chip focuses on handling the Transformer architecture in AI inference and aims to build the world's most powerful Transformer inference server. The company claims that Sohu is the fastest Transformer chip to date and will challenge Nvidia's leadership in the AI chip field. The company believes that as AI models continue to scale, specialized chips will become the largest market in the AI field. Etched's vision is to drive the scaling of AI models to achieve superintelligence and, in the process, become a leading AI chip supplier.
(Source:VentureBeat）