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COLD START / catalog / c/etchedretrieved 2026-06-22T14:43 UTC · 15 sources read

Etched

Etched builds custom ASIC chips designed exclusively for transformer-based AI models to outperform general-purpose GPUs on inference workloads.

etched.com · San Jose

CALL NO.CS·ETCHED·26
StageVenture RoundJanuary 2026 · led by Stripes[1][2][3][5][6][7][8]
Raised$625Mdisclosed rounds[13][14]
Headcount258as of May 2026[13]
Valuationnot publicly disclosedno source in ledger
Founded2022[1][13][14]
Money

Raised $625M across disclosed rounds.[13][14]

Venture Round closed January 2026, led by Stripes.[1][2][3][5][6][7][8]

post-money valuation is not publicly disclosed.

Named investors include Stripes, Peter Thiel, Positive Sum Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Primary Venture Partners, Thomas Dohmke, Balaji Srinivasan, Stanley Druckenmiller, Kyle Vogt.[1][2][4][7]

People

Gavin Uberti, CEO and Co-Founder[1][4][9][10][13]

Chris Zhu, Co-Founder[1][4][9][10][13]

Robert Wachen, Co-Founder and COO[1][4][9][10][13]

Mark Ross, CTO[1][11][12][13]

Ajat Hukkoo, Vice President Hardware Engineering[1][11][12][13]

Saptadeep Pal, Chief Architect[1][11][12][13]

Sriram Swaminathan, Head of SoC & Performance DV[1][11][12][13]

Isaiah Goldsmith, Office of the CEO[1][11][12][13]

Signals
Jan 14 2026fundingEtched raises $500M at $5B valuation to challenge Nvidia[1][2][3][5][6][7][8]
Feb 20 2025otherEtched partners with Cognition, Mercor, CoreWeave, and Anthropic for inference-time compute hackathon company claim, not independently confirmed[13]
Jun 25 2024fundingEtched raises $120 million to build chip to take on Nvidia in AI[4]
Comps

Nvidia · nvidia.com · Primary competitor; Etched claims Sohu is an order of magnitude faster and cheaper than Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs for transformer inference.[2][3][4]

Cerebras Systems · cerebras.net · Direct competitor in specialized AI hardware; both target Nvidia's dominance with purpose-built silicon for large models.[2][4]

Groq · groq.com · Competes on specialized inference hardware for transformer-based models, same buyer and workflow.[13]

Risk

The customer proof is company-sourced only. No independent source in this ledger confirms it.[13]

Next question

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Sourcestracings · 15

Jun 2026 · datacenterdynamics.com

reported

Jun 2026 · builtinsf.com

reported

Jun 2026 · finance.yahoo.com

reported

Jun 2026 · linkedin.com

vendor

Jun 2026 · linkedin.com

vendor

Jun 2026 · linkedin.com

vendor

Jun 2026 · linkedin.com

vendor

Jun 2026 · etched.com

company

[14]Org Enrichment Data

Jun 2026

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[15]Apollo People Search

Jun 2026

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Etched

CALL NO.CS·ETCHED·26

Etched builds custom ASIC chips designed exclusively for transformer-based AI models to outperform general-purpose GPUs on inference workloads.

etched.com · San Jose

StageVenture Round
Raised$625M
Headcount258
Valuationnot publicly disclosed
Founded2022
CompsNvidia +2

Ask for one referenceable production customer.

Not a recommendation. The first thing this ledger cannot answer.