AI chip startup Etched has raised another $700 million in funding at a valuation of $21 billion, led by quantitative trading firm Jane Street.
The company’s valuation has surged dramatically in recent months. Etched was valued at $5 billion in December and reached $10.3 billion in July after raising $300 million. Its valuation has now nearly doubled to $21 billion in just one month.
Etched develops AI systems designed to speed up inference, the process that occurs after a user submits a prompt. The company has developed new technologies for both the prefill and decode stages of AI inference.
Its low-voltage prefill chip is designed to deliver faster processing while reducing heat, while its new cluster-scale memory allows multiple chips to share memory at high speed and low latency.
Jane Street said it tested Etched’s chip and was impressed with the early results. The firm has also installed an Etched system in its data center.
Other investors include Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel, Tiger Global, Bain Capital Ventures, Blackstone and others.
