Etched Raises $700 Million at $21 Billion Valuation
Etched, a developer of AI inference clusters, raised $700 million in funding at a valuation of $21 billion. The round was led by quantitative trading firm Jane Street, which also became Etched's first paying customer after receiving its hardware last month. Other investors include Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Tiger Global. The company has developed two key technologies: Low Voltage Inference for higher compute density within the same power envelope as existing systems, and Cluster Scale Memory to create a shared memory pool across an entire cluster. Etched's CEO emphasized scaling production after successfully shipping its first rack-scale system. The firm now claims over $1 billion in customer contracts with AI companies and cloud providers. Despite strong backing from top-tier investors like Peter Thiel and SK Hynix, some industry observers remain skeptical about the long-term viability of Etched’s business model.
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