Etched emerges with $800M Series B funding, $5B valuation, and $1B+ in pre-sales; poaches 400+ engineers from Nvidia and TSMC for AI inference chip.

AI chip startup Etched has raised $800 million, adding fresh momentum to the race for AI inference chips as investors seek the next potential challenger to Nvidia. The company's backers include Jane Street and VentureTech Alliance, a venture firm linked to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Etched plans to begin shipping chips to some customers this summer, marking a significant step toward commercial deployment after maintaining a relatively low public profile for approximately two years.

The funding details reveal that Etched closed a $500 million Series round in December, led by Stripes and supported by Peter Thiel, Positive Sum, Ribbit Capital, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, and VentureTech Alliance. Jane Street has been particularly committed to the company, having led a previously undisclosed round and subsequently adding more capital; the firm's total investment in Etched now exceeds $100 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The investor roster also includes Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Stanley Druckenmiller, combining prominent AI researchers, venture capitalists, and hedge fund expertise.

Etched, founded in 2022, is testing its products and has signed $1 billion in sales contracts, though the company has declined to disclose customer identities. Working with TSMC on low-voltage inference technology, Etched is designing an integrated server-rack solution encompassing circuit boards, cooling systems, and networking connections. This full-stack approach reflects industry expectations that customers will increasingly prioritize near-term AI compute availability, particularly as the sector shifts its focus from model training to inference and deployment.