Etched raises $800 million with AI-chip that uses test contracts

• Etched says it will run the first product from $1 billion contract systems with chip testing
• The company announced $800 million in funding, with the run rate of $500 million per month and $5 billion in annual revenue
• Startup Etched is developing a chip for inference and plans to launch it in the fourth quarter

Read more about the deal on TechCrunch and The Next Web.

AI startup Etched has been working on an inference chip for some time, much like TSMC’s success with chips. The company raised $800 million, which is already more than $1 billion: it has already started with a system, in which it will be able to run chips.

Etched plans to ship its first inference chip soon. The company describes its system as “frontier inference clusters” — a complete set of chips that, with software, will be able to enable inference at scale for AI models. The company says it has already built a system with chips from Sohu, which uses a transceiver architecture for Chinese-made chips, which will replace existing product capabilities. The company also says it is building a server-side chipset with a focus on high-performance computing.

Etched’s plan is to launch inference chips.

Tags: Technology/AI