/Tech1h ago

AI startup Etched exits stealth with $800M in funding for its Sohu chip, which hardcodes LLM attention into silicon

Story Overview

Etched has stepped out of stealth with $800 million raised across multiple rounds to advance its Sohu ASIC, a chip built specifically for transformer-based LLM inference, while also reporting more than $1 billion in customer contracts and plans to ship its first full inference racks this summer after a completed A0 tapeout.

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Original post

Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshag#571inTech

Three years ago, two Harvard dropouts set out to build a better AI chip than the largest companies in the world.

Almost everyone I called at the time said it was impossible.

Today, Etched (@Etched) comes out of stealth with $800M total raised, $1B in signed customer contracts, and a working next-gen AI chip.

This was my excuse to ask the two founders, @UbertiGavin and @robertwachen, every question I have about compute and inference.

We discuss: - Why they built an entire rack and not just a chip - The two technical bets behind their architecture no one else has tried - How two founders in their twenties recruited industry legends - The night they nearly ran out of money - Why whoever produces the most tokens wins

If you care about the future of compute, Gavin and Rob are two people to know. I think you will find the story of what they have built hard to forget.

Enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 1:00 Why Nobody Believed Etched Would Work 14:06 Why Inference Is the Bottleneck 22:27 Gavin and Rob’s Origin Stories 33:24 Taking Huge Risks to Move Faster 49:43 Kernels, Compilers, and the AI Stack 1:02:08 Raising $100M to Survive 1:16:00 The Future of Models, Agents, and Intelligence

8:00 AM · Jun 30, 2026 · 2.7K Views

Contract Momentum

Early contracts already exceed total funding

The company states it has secured over $1 billion in deals and kicked off production to fulfill them, with early customer tests highlighting throughput, latency, and power metrics on inference workloads.

Architecture Focus

Specialized hardware bets on transformer dominance

Sohu targets only transformer models through architectural choices like low-voltage inference and cluster-scale memory, though independent benchmarks confirming claimed advantages over general-purpose GPUs remain unavailable in public sources.

Sentiment

Positive users praise Etched's $800M raise and $1B AI inference contracts as strong validation of its transformer-specific chip, citing real hardware progress and rapid development speed.

Pos

100.0%

Neg

0.0%

17 comments with sentiment.

Cluster Engagement

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Most Activity

VIEWS9.9KBOOKMARKS20LIKES72RETWEETS5REPLIES15

Bryan Johnson@bryan_johnson

Breaking news for people who want to look hot, be young and not die.   A few years ago, two college dropouts told me they could accelerate longevity by building a faster AI chip.   I invested, and they just pulled it off.  What it means:  > 10x more throughput (tokens per second) for the same power footprint

> Dramatically lower operational costs for executing today’s frontier models

> Run far larger, more capable AI models within the same power and thermal budget, because a transformer-specific chip spends a fraction of the energy per token that a general-purpose GPU does

Rob and Gavin's approach resonated with me because solving aging is a gigantic combinatorial search problem. The chemical space of small, drug-like molecules has around 10^60 possibilities.

These compounds need to be mapped against a human proteome derived from 20,000 genes, including 1,600 transcription factors, and a dense web of interactions among them.   The size of the combinatorial space is problematic. You need to identify which targets to modulate, within specific cellular lineages, at exact dosages, and in optimal temporal sequences.  Traditional high precision physics simulations are too slow to brute force the problem. You can shortcut it with AI inference, using frontier neural networks as hyper fast surrogate models to predict biological interactions instantly. By hardwiring transformer logic into silicon, Etched offers the infrastructure needed to run these massive biological foundation models at scale.  I'm surprised and impressed they were able to pull this off, and so quickly.

They already have $1B in orders

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

26m9.9K7220

Matt Shumer@mattshumer_

Nvidia is worth $5T because the world realized inference is the new oil.

If Etched’s chips are meaningfully better than Nvidia’s for inference…

What is Etched worth?

This is a worldview-shattering event.

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h8.4K245

Matt Shumer@mattshumer_

Nvidia has some serious competition coming their way.

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h5.8K185

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

Etched is coming out of stealth with $800M raised, $1B+ in customer contracts, first racks shipping this summer, and claims of SOTA inference throughput, latency, and power efficiency.

But holy, look who backed the funding. The who-is-who if AI reseracher and VC.

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h1.3K113

Beff (e/acc)@beffjezos

Etched had a very clear thesis about the landscape of algorithms years ago and they made a bold bet, executed relentlessly while pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the digital substrate.

Visited their operations months ago and was thoroughly impressed. Kudos to the team and congrats on the huge milestone!

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

18m1.8K152

Tri Dao@tri_dao

It's wild how quickly Etched designed and got the chips out, all within 2 years. They went deep, hardcoding attention into silicon and getting very high MFU. This kind of hardware tailored made for LLM inference is soon gonna bring cost of intelligence down 10x

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h560161

"Leigh Marie" Braswell@LM_Braswell

Congrats to my friends & the team at @Etched! Awesome progress solving one of the most important bottlenecks in AI.

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h653181

Iain Dunning@iaindunning

Congrats to Etched! One of our @HRTVentures investments, more to come.

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h555121

Matt Shumer@mattshumer_

I’m a very early investor in Etched, as I’ve believed for years that inference will be the biggest market we’ve ever seen.

Incredibly impressed by the team’s execution and so excited to use models powered by their hardware!

Matt Shumer@mattshumer_

Nvidia is worth $5T because the world realized inference is the new oil.

If Etched’s chips are meaningfully better than Nvidia’s for inference…

What is Etched worth?

This is a worldview-shattering event.

1h2.2K60

Altcoinist@Altcoinist

@bryan_johnson Bryan Johnson & Ribbit bullish confluence

20m2149

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

impressively fast execution from the etched team after a rocky start. hopefully it works well. congratulations!

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

24m35270

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

*of AI reseracher, typo

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

Etched is coming out of stealth with $800M raised, $1B+ in customer contracts, first racks shipping this summer, and claims of SOTA inference throughput, latency, and power efficiency.

But holy, look who backed the funding. The who-is-who if AI reseracher and VC.

1h1.8K130

andrew gao@itsandrewgao

Cooking

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

43m15511

Ben Tossell@bentossell

i backed etched back in 2023, insane to see how far they've come and how much further they're going to go

huge!

inference markets are insane

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h62630

Yash Patil@ypatil125

Huge accomplishment! Congratulations @robertwachen and the entire @Etched team!

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h3711

rohan anil@_arohan_

I honestly was *very moved* by the presentation Etched team gave on Saturday, the energy was palpable. When I was working at Gemini, etched were on our radar, now seeing the chip taped out and seeing live benchmarks was very cool.

My only wish list is that these chips do preconditioning too during inference time 😁

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

26m36270

AI Engineer@aiDotEngineer

Special new @latentspacepod live recording added to the Expo schedule on Thursday, with @swyx and @robertwachen alongside his Inference track appearance!

congrats to Etched on a massive milestone!

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h2K152

Jay Hack@mathemagic1an

Been watching demos of Etched for years now and still blows me away every time

Crazy ambitious strategy to scale inference. Cluster-scale memory w/ latency of SRAM but cheap like HBM.

Proud to be a backer of these guys, absolute rocketship

Etched@Etched

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.

1h26510

Patirck OShuagnhassy@archhhi

@patrick_oshag @Etched My strategy plan.

⬇️

1h1531

Daryl@allvibesnoskill

@bryan_johnson Can I buy one

22m34