Happy Monday!
Etched
The AI chip startup founded by three Harvard dropouts, has raised a $300 million Series C at a $10.3 billion valuation, 2X in seven months. The round was led by Sequoia, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, SK Hynix, Jane Street and Diffusion Capital.
Founded in 2022 by Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen and Chris Zhu, Etched is building full-stack inference systems designed to run AI models faster and more cheaply than traditional GPUs. Its architecture tackles both major stages of inference: a low-voltage chip for processing prompts and a shared, cluster-scale memory system for generating output tokens. The company says its systems can support transformers, mixture-of-experts models such as DeepSeek and Qwen, and non-transformer architectures including Mamba.
The founders left Harvard with little fundraising or semiconductor experience and initially ran chip-design servers from an employee’s garage. Today, Etched has about 400 employees, a 2-megawatt data center and a new 10-megawatt facility in Milpitas with $1 billion in booked orders.
Etched is taking direct aim at Nvidia’s dominance in AI inference, while also competing with custom-chip players such as Groq, Cerebras and Google’s TPU program. The risk is all about execution: designing a chip is one thing, but manufacturing and deploying complete systems at scale is even harder.
Meshy AI
(Also reported by The Crane the week)
The generative AI 3D model company has raised $400 million at a $1.5 billion valuation led by IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China and Monolith Management.
Founded in 2023 by Ethan Hu, an MIT-trained computer graphics researcher, Meshy turns text prompts or images into production-ready 3D assets in less than 60 seconds, at a cost of about $1 per model. The company says it has more than 12 million users, generated over 100 million models and grew ARR about 12X YoY.
Meshy is betting AI-generated 3D will become basic infrastructure for gaming, 3D printing and industrial design.
Last week a total of 17 startups raised $1.13B in funding, 1 exit:
$570.3M goes to 7 Enterprise startups
$321M goes to 2 AI Hardware startups
$144M goes to 3 Healthcare startups
$43M goes to 2 FinTech startups
$26M goes to 1 Construction startup
$24M goes to 1 BioTech startup
$5.5M goes to 1 InsurTech startup
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If you’re interested in seeing what deals are happening in China, check out my other newsletter: The Crane.
Edith
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Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
Enterprise
Meshy AI (AI 3D model generator) raised $400M Series B led by IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China, Monolith Capital
Glow (AI-native endpoint security) raised $100M Series B led by Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures
Abstract Security (composable security operations) raised $25M Series A led by AVP, Cheyenne Ventures
SkyPilot (unified AI compute platform) raised $20M Seed led by Lux Capital
Infinity AI Institute (machine learning software for AI chips) raised $15M Seed from Touring Capital
Swamp Club (deterministic AI agents automation) raised $6.2M Seed
StrongestLayer (AI-native email security) raised $4.1M Seed led by Inovia Capital
AI Hardware
Etched (AI chip manufacturer) raised $300M Series C led by Sequoia Capital
Elio Labs (AI-native physical sensors) raised $21M Seed led by Innovation Endeavors, Xora Innovation
Healthcare
Candid Health (autonomous revenue cycle management platform) raised $120M Series D led by Sixth Street Growth
Prosper Medical (AI concierge primary care platform) raised $16M Seed led by FUSE
Cheiron (operating system for drug programs) raised $8M Seed led by Menlo Ventures
FinTech
Natural (payments infrastructure for AI agents) raised $30M Series A led by Forerunner
Neon Commerce (direct-to-consumer commerce for games) raised $13M Series A led by Krafton
Construction
Gritt (AI-powered construction robotics) raised $26M Series A led by Obvious Ventures
BioTech
Transcripta Bio (AI drug discovery platform for neurological and neuromuscular diseases) raised $24M Series A led by Mayo Clinic, Omnimed
InsurTech
Klaimee (insurance warranties for AI agents) raised $5.5M Seed led by FundersClub
IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
Love this series, Edith. $1.13B in a week and the standout is a transformer-specific chip at $10.3B — telling that the market's biggest conviction sits at the layer that's hardest to replicate.
How are you thinking about moat at the model and application layer right now, where the capability itself keeps getting cheaper? That's the question I keep coming back to.