/Tech2h ago

AI chip startup Etched raises $800 million and tapes out its chip after deploying an emergency sprint to Bangalore

Story Overview

Etched has raised a total of $800 million across rounds to develop purpose-built inference chips for transformer models, with the latest tranche closing at a $5 billion valuation and the company now validating its first taped-out A0 silicon ahead of rack shipments this summer.

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#571

Original post

Tijori@Tijori1

US based Etched Semiconductor backed by Jane Street, HRT, Two Sigma, and Jump, 400+ engineers from NVIDIA, TPUs, Broadcom, SK Hynix, TSMC

$800M raised and $1B+ in contracts to take on Nvidia

Founder says that the engineers that finally helped then meet deadlines were in Bangalore, the team thats actually doing all the work!

Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshag

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

2:21 AM · Jul 1, 2026 · 23.7K Views

Funding Surge

Backers signal hardware appetite

Quantitative firms like Jane Street and Two Sigma joined the cap table alongside Peter Thiel and AI researchers, showing capital flowing toward ASICs that aim for better efficiency than general-purpose GPUs on inference workloads.

Contract Wins

Contracts already exceed the raise

Over $1 billion in customer deals are in place even before first racks ship, though independent benchmarks on how the chips perform against Nvidia alternatives remain unavailable so far.

Sentiment

Many users criticized Etched Semiconductor's Bangalore deployment as negative news because the local team caused delays that required US engineers to intervene and highlighted bureaucratic hurdles in India.

Pos

14.3%

Neg

85.7%

7 comments with sentiment.

Cluster Engagement

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Posts from X

Most Activity

VIEWS1.2KLIKES32

Chirag Meswani@CMeswani

@Tijori1 They are literally saying that the Bangalore team (vendor) was putting them behind schedule and that's why they had to stay here.

That's not a pat on the back.

3h1.2K32

BOOKMARKS1

Avishar Dutta@AvisharDutta

@Tijori1 @cvkrishnan @pk00202500

3h77251

RETWEETS2

Invest Like the Best@InvestLikeBest

There's a lot of Etched lore in this episode.

The best might be when a vendor fell behind schedule, Etched shipped a dozen top engineers to Bangalore and ran a 24-hour clock until the chip was done.

Gavin (the CEO) lived there for 4 months himself.

Other chip companies with that same vendor still haven't taped out.

"We were getting close to taping out the chip, and we realized one of our vendors was way behind.

The team doing the work was all in Bangalore, so we shipped a dozen of our top engineers across the world for six months.

Every morning we'd be the first ones in. We audited huge amounts of the code, built tools to make it go faster, and made design decisions on the spot.

No 12-hour back and forth.

We still had part of the team in the US, so we ran a 24-hour development cycle.

At 8 AM and 8 PM every day we'd all get on Zoom, share everything, and say, when I wake up, this must be done. It was extremely intense.

We saw other chips at the same stage with that same vendor take years.

They still aren't out today. Some haven't even taped out.

That level of urgency is what it takes to bring a product to market."

Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshag

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.

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!

1h5.5K1610

REPLIES2

Pk@pk00202500

@AvisharDutta @Tijori1 @cvkrishnan :( could have & still can build the next silicon valley here !!! babus culture of easy going deals in name of ToT & localization is destroying the energy of the city !!! there is a reason why Boeing is doubling down on blr and cutting r&d jobs in Virginia & Berkeley :(

3h1184

Dhani@DhaniSriram

@Tijori1 How bad is your reading comprehension? They’re literally saying that engineers in Bangalore were the reason for the delay.

2h5708

Avishar Dutta@AvisharDutta

@pk00202500 @Tijori1 @cvkrishnan The way I see it is that there is no harm in being a silicon valley for someone else. You can't manuf or buy this level of globalisation. What the city needs to do is to improve it's infra. Ofcourse, would have loved it if it was an Indian team solving for us

3h625

kaivalya@K6aShah

@Tijori1 This is not positive news. They literally had to physically come to make sure the vendor worked properly, they were even in office before the vendor every morning.

2h6464

Patirck OShuagnhassy@archhhi

@InvestLikeBest My strategy plan.

⬇️

1h131

Harper@reverseuno420

@Tijori1 Reading comprehension is not your strong suit

2h3161

Charan N@Charan_N6361

@Tijori1 What vendor are they talking about?

2h467

Patirck OShuagnhassy@hernandez_jesly

@archhhi @InvestLikeBest Join my fan club 👇

1h3

Akilesh Srikantaiah@AkileshNrn

@Tijori1 You will not believe the number of people with the Bengaluru experience working for chip companies across the world!

2h341

Krishnan@cvkrishnan

@pk00202500 @AvisharDutta @Tijori1 It is also capital.

2h222

Axelor@Chaitanyak61131

@Tijori1 Applies to a lot of mnc consultant teams too.

1h193

Jm_Luye@luye_1021

@Tijori1 $1B in contracts this early with that caliber of backers suggests real enterprise interest in inference-specific silicon. If they execute, it changes positioning for anyone long pure GPU exposure.

4h171

Ronak Thakkar@Ronak_thakkar_

@Tijori1 🫡

1h149

Venkat — inference & RL/acc@venkat_systems

@InvestLikeBest @patrick_oshag TSMC lore too ! @AcquiredFM guys time for another episode?

1h52

marinebat@marinebat80ta

@AvisharDutta @pk00202500 @Tijori1 @cvkrishnan There is no problem of infra wrt semi design. Nobody from India is solving hard problems on our own. Cities infra problems will be solved if central govt gives fare share of tax devolution instead of building useless airport in UP

2h41

no framework person@entropixs

@Tijori1 @svadhyayi

1h14

Patirck OShuagnhassy@archhhi

@hernandez_jesly @InvestLikeBest Many of my Twitter followers have already joined my WhatsApp.

FREE TO JOIN My Real-time trading alerts and investment strategies Market forecast analysis

Reply with "join" to my WhatsApp number +16056506189 to join for free.

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1h2