Inference Chip Startup Etched Raises $800M, Unveils Working Silicon; Oxmiq Secures $35M for Unified AI Chip IP

Inference chip startup Etched emerged from stealth on July 1, 2026, disclosing $800 million in funding and a working silicon produced on TSMC's N4P process technology. The company, headquartered in San Jose, also reported that it has signed more than $1 billion in customer contracts and is now validating a rack-scale product with clients.

The $800 million was raised over multiple rounds, with the latest a $500 million tranche in December that valued Etched at $5 billion post money. Investors include VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Stripes, Radical Ventures, Primary VC, Peter Thiel, Andrej Karpathy, and Geoffrey Hinton.

Etched's Architecture and Facilities

Etched's unnamed chip uses an architecture that creates a shared low latency memory pool across the entire scale-up domain. The company says its proprietary ultra low latency, high bandwidth interconnect enables dramatically faster memory access across chips. Beyond the chip itself, Etched has stood up a factory in Taiwan and built a 2 megawatt data center, test house, and NPI prototyping lab at its California offices.

• The chip was produced on TSMC's N4P process technology.
• The company is validating its rack-scale product with customers.
• Etched has built a 2MW data center and a factory in Taiwan.
• Co-founder Rob Wachen stated the company aims to build for gigawatt scale.

Oxmiq and Tesla Join the Chip Race

In a separate development, AI startup Oxmiq raised $35 million from investors including Samsung Catalyst Fund and Fudomo. The company aims to combine GPUs, CPUs, and a tensor engine into a single block of intellectual property that it can license to other chipmakers. Meanwhile, Tesla has hired a 17 year Intel veteran responsible for overseeing billion dollar fab startups. Gary Jiang, who most recently managed the installation of advanced tools at Intel's Arizona 14A fab, is expected to oversee Tesla's fab efforts for Terafab's licensing of the 14A process.

NVIDIA also announced a push to build infrastructure in the United States. The company stated its partners are investing in American manufacturing, supply chains, energy grids, and skilled workforces to produce the infrastructure needed for healthcare, scientific discovery, and industrial productivity.

AMD Zen 6 leak Suggests Third Core Type

A leak on the Linux kernel patch mailing list, spotted by Phoronix, revealed that AMD's upcoming Zen 6 processors may include a previously unannounced low power core type. The description resembles Intel's efficiency cores, suggesting AMD is preparing to compete more directly in power efficient designs. The leak also corroborates rumors of a Sony handheld SoC codenamed Canis that may use this architecture.

Etched co founder and CEO Gavin Uberti summed up the broader trend: "We recognized early on that frontier AI would become one of the most economically significant technologies ever created, but that the infrastructure needed to serve those models in a sustainable and economically viable way simply did not exist." With $800 million in hand and a working chip, Etched is betting that inference infrastructure will be the next bottleneck in the AI boom.