Inference chip startup Etched launches with $800M in funding - SiliconANGLE

Inference chip startup Etched launches with $800M in funding

Etched Inc., a developer of artificial intelligence inference chips, launched today with $800 million in funding.

The startup raised the capital over multiple rounds. The most recent investment, which closed in December, valued Etched at $5 billion. It included the participation of VentureTech Alliance, a startup fund associated with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. It was joined by more than a dozen other backers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy.

Etched plans to produce its inference chips using TSMC’s N4P process. It’s an enhanced version of the chip giant’s five-nanometer node that provides 11% better performance than the original. According to Etch, its first prototype chips rolled off TMSC’s N4P production line earlier this year.

Nvidia Corp.’s flagship Rubin graphics processing unit is optimized for both AI training and inference. Focusing solely on inference, the approach that Etched has taken, makes it possible to reduce power usage by removing training-optimized circuits. Alternatively, engineers can add more inference circuitry to boost processing speeds.