Inference-chip startup Etched hits $10.3 billion valuation

Etched, an AI chip startup founded by three Harvard dropouts, raised funding at a $10.3 billion valuation from prominent investors including Sequoia Capital. The company says its chips and memory components speed up inference for any AI model without relying on GPUs.

Why it matters: Etched's GPU-free inference approach is a bet that as AI shifts from training to serving deployed models at scale, specialized inference silicon can undercut Nvidia's dominance on cost and efficiency. The valuation jump shows investors are still funding alternative chip architectures despite an AI infrastructure market already carrying over $1.6 trillion in off-balance-sheet debt.