AI Chip Startup Etched in Talks for $20 Billion Valuation Funding Round

AI chip startup Etched is reportedly negotiating a new funding round at a $20 billion valuation, following a recent $5 billion valuation round and an ongoing $10 billion round led by Sequoia Capital. This rapid valuation growth comes after the company completed the A0 stepping tapeout of its 4nm inference accelerator. The massive jump in Etched's valuation highlights the intense investor demand for energy-efficient AI hardware and viable alternatives to Nvidia's dominant GPUs. As AI models scale, hardware that reduces power consumption while maintaining high performance is becoming critical for the industry. Etched's chip, named Sohu, is a transformer-specialized ASIC manufactured on TSMC's 4nm (N4P) process node. Due to multi-level optimization, the mathematical module voltage of the chip is over 50% lower than most competitors, resulting in significantly higher actual computing efficiency.