Etched Raises $700 Million at $21 Billion Valuation as Jane Street Backs Tested AI Chips
Updated
Updated · TechCrunch · Aug 18
Etched Raises $700 Million at $21 Billion Valuation as Jane Street Backs Tested AI Chips
1 articles · Updated · TechCrunch · Aug 18
Summary
$700 million in new funding lifted Etched’s valuation to $21 billion, roughly doubling it from $10.3 billion just a month after its July Series C.
Jane Street led the round after testing Etched’s hardware and installing its own rack in a datacenter, citing early results strong enough for demanding workloads.
Etched says investor demand reflects its inference-focused design: a low-voltage prefill chip plus cluster-scale memory and interconnects for decode, aimed at faster output and lower costs.
The startup sells full AI systems it calls frontier inference clusters and is still pushing back on an old perception that its chips are locked to a single frontier model.