NVIDIA Competitor Etched Raises $500M in Funding

The backing from investors like Stripes and Peter Thiel is expected to help the company advance AI hardware.

Written by Ashley Bowden
Published on Jan. 14, 2026
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Photo: Shutterstock
REVIEWED BY
Rose Velazquez | Jan 14, 2026

Etched, a San Francisco-based company operating in the AI hardware space, raised $500 million to compete with semiconductor giant NVIDIA, according to reporting by Bloomberg. The company’s latest injection of capital came from investors including Stripes and Peter Thiel.

The company designs computer chips for transformer-based AI models. Produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, using a 4nm process, its Sohu product is intended to be more efficient than general-purpose GPUs, and it can run models made by the likes of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic.

Etched’s latest raise builds on a $120 million Series A in 2024. Investment plans for its new capital raise were not specified.

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