AI Chip Startup Etched Reaches $5 Billion Valuation, Tops $1 Billion in Orders

Founded in 2022 by Harvard dropouts Gavin Uberti, Chris Zhu and Robert Wachen, San Jose-based Etched is developing chips and rack-scale systems dedicated to AI inference — the work of running trained models to generate answers. The strategy targets a costly bottleneck for AI providers and challenges Nvidia’s general-purpose GPUs with specialised hardware designed for higher throughput and lower power use. Investor interest has intensified as spending shifts from training models toward serving them at scale.

Etched is discussing a new financing led by existing investor Jane Street at a valuation of about $20 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on July 18, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. That would be four times its $5 billion post-money valuation from December 2025. A separate Sequoia Capital-led round is proceeding at a $10 billion valuation; neither transaction has closed and terms may change. Etched said on June 30 it had raised $800 million in total and secured more than $1 billion in customer contracts.