AI chip startup Etched defies skeptics, hits $10.3B valuation from big-name investors

Etched, an AI chip startup founded in 2022 by three Harvard dropouts, has successfully closed a $300 million Series C funding round, achieving a $10.3 billion valuation. Co-founder and COO Robert Wachen confirmed this to TechCrunch. Etched's systems are designed to run various AI models, including Mixture of Experts models like DeepSeek and Qwen, and non-transformer designs such as Mamba, which utilizes a state-space model architecture.