AI chip startup Etched announced Thursday that it has completed a $300 million Series C funding round, giving the company a valuation of $10.3 billion.
The company, which counts Sequoia among its backers, is part of a wave of startups aiming to take on Nvidia’s commanding position in the artificial intelligence chip space. Etched focuses specifically on hardware designed for inference — the process by which AI models are actually run and put to use.
Here are key details from the announcement:
• Sequoia led the funding round, with additional investment coming from Andreessen Horowitz, Jane Street, Diffusion, and SK Hynix.
• Etched says this round marks the highest valuation ever achieved for a Series C led by Sequoia.
• The newly raised capital will go toward growing production capacity and expanding deployments with customers.
• The company recently opened an 80,000-square-foot facility near its San Jose, California headquarters to support increased production and prototyping efforts.
• According to Etched, customer demand for its AI inference systems is consistently exceeding what the company can currently supply, as more clients move from testing the technology to full deployment.
• Etched currently employs around 400 people and says it is growing quickly.
