ASIC

Etched, a startup founded by Harvard dropouts, has secured a $10.3 billion valuation for its 'Sohu' chip, an ASIC designed specifically to run Transformer models at speeds far exceeding NVIDIA's H100 GPUs.

AI chip startup Etched reaches a $5 billion valuation and $1 billion in pre-orders for its Sohu chip, an ASIC designed exclusively for Transformer models, challenging Nvidia's dominance in the inference market.

As the demand for specialized AI hardware skyrockets, industry giants like OpenAI and SpaceX are moving away from Nvidia's monopoly to build their own custom silicon, signaling a major shift in the LLM infrastructure landscape.

OpenAI transitions into silicon with Jalapeño, a custom ASIC designed with Broadcom to optimize inference and reduce dependency on generic GPUs.