Nvidia Faces New AI Chip Rival From Startup Founded by Former Execs
Nvidia's NVDA grip on AI chips is facing new competition in the form of Etched, a two-year-old startup that has attracted key talent from Nvidia itself. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Etched recruited Brian Loiler, a former Nvidia executive who spent 22 years building the company's HGX and DGX server systems.
Loiler joined Etched in 2024 as Vice President of Platform and helped lure roughly a dozen more engineers away from Nvidia. These ex-Nvidia employees now make up about 15% of Etched's workforce, which totals around 400 people.
The startup's flagship product is the Sohu chip, designed to run transformer-based AI models - the same architecture behind large language models like ChatGPT. Etched raised $120 million in Series A funding in 2024 and closed a $300 million Series C in July, pushing its valuation to $10.3 billion.
Nvidia's most famous skeptic, Michael Burry, has been warning for months that the company's grip on AI chips is not as strong as investors think. With Etched's emergence, Burry now claims that this startup represents 'serious competition' for Nvidia.