Etched in innovation: Nvidia’s New challenger

The co-founder of Etched, Galvin Uberti has declared war with Nvidia, saying that its compony would become the world’s leading company. Nvidia, for many years has been the leader in the GPU market for gaming and professional graphics applications. But this hasn’t stop emerging challengers from coming up with innovative ideas and trying to snatch pieces of the piece from Nvidia. Among them is Etched a promising startup that unveiled Sohu, their response to Nvidia’s H100 chip.

The Willdcard

Founded by Gavin Uberti and Chris Zhu, Etched has unveiled it latest transformer-exclusive chip, Sohu. But the Sohu chip that the company has presented a very novel approach to the AI chip problem. Unlike the well rounded GPU that has focuses on a wide spectrum of tasks, Etched’s Sohu chips focus on a single type of model: Transformers.

By doing so, it allowed Sohu to deliver dramatically faster performance than even Nvidia’s next generation of Blackwell GB200 GPUs when running text, image, and video transformers. Etched has claimed that their chips deliver more than 100x the performance of a similarly priced GPU cluster.

Having a narrower scope also means that the chips will also be more competitive when it comes to its pricing. This would make the Sohu chip a very attractive option for AI companies that rely on AI chips to power their AI product because speed and cost are existential to this industry that they are trying to build.

Mostly importantly, this unique strategy would also mean that Sohu would be more environmentally friendly option for business leaders that need specialised chips. As AI applications proliferate across industries, the demand for energy efficient solution becomes paramount. Etched positions Sohu not just a a technological advancement but as a crucial step towards mitigating the environmental impact of AI infrastructure. Sohu’s streamlined architecture could thus set a new standard for sustainability in AI hardware.

Challengers and competitions

Despite its innovative edge, Etched faces formidable competition from established players and fellow startups alike. Competitors such as perceive and Grow are also investing in transformer-specific optimisations, reflecting the intense race to capture market share in AI hardware. However, Etched’s early mover advantage in specialising exclusively on transformers could resonate strongly with enterprises seeking tailored solution for their AI initiatives.

Latest funding

Today, Etched said it has closed a $120 million Series A funding round, co-led by Primary Venture Partners and Positive Sum Ventures, bringing Etched’s total raised to $125.36 million.

Ambitions pushing them over the “etched”?

While you have to give Etched credit for its ingenuity and creative solution, but then at what cost? Because what they are creating is a transformer-exclusive chip, so if the interest of transformers dissipates, that could also signify the end of the road for this company.

In an interview with Bloomberg, CEO Gavin Uberti acknowledged that they are inherently taking a bet on transformer architecture. He added that while that might be a a huge gamble, but he is confident that the transformer-exclusive chips wouldn’t become obsolete anytime soon.