July 23 (Reuters) – Sequoia-backed Etched said on Thursday it raised $300 million in a Series C funding round that valued the AI chip company at $10.3 billion.
Etched is among a growing number of startups seeking to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in AI chips by developing hardware for inference, the process of running artificial intelligence models.
Here are some details:
• The funding round was led by Sequoia, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Jane Street, Diffusion and SK Hynix.
• Etched said the financing represents the highest valuation ever for a Sequoia-led Series C.
• The company will use the proceeds to expand production and customer deployments.
• It recently opened an 80,000-square-foot facility near its San Jose, California headquarters to expand production and prototyping.
• Etched said demand for its AI inference systems continues to outpace supply as customers move from evaluation to deployment.
• The company said it has about 400 employees, and is rapidly expanding.
(Reporting by Anzar Mehraj in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)
