Transformer-Chip Startup Etched Raises $700M at $21 Billion Valuation

Etched, a U.S. startup building chips purpose-built for the Transformer architecture, has closed a $700 million funding round that lifts its valuation to about $21 billion — nearly double the $10.3 billion it reached in its prior round a month earlier. The round was led by Jane Street, its first major customer. Etched's "Purpose-Built for Transformers" approach trades general-purpose flexibility for higher inference speed and lower cost on large language models, and the company is positioned among a growing field of AI-silicon challengers to NVIDIA.