{
 "name": "Etched",
 "type": "company",
 "episodes": [
  "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che"
 ],
 "claims": [
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "The entire semiconductor and data-center industry is built on general-purpose 'buffer', so designing for a specific use case lets you change constraints and compound many small wins into a radically better inference system.",
   "stance": "assertion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "semiconductors",
    "inference",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "4:21",
   "quote": "the entire semiconductors and data center industry is built on buffer",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Gavin Uberti",
   "claim": "You win by shipping, and a relentlessly focused team can build the best product in the world with far fewer people than the incumbents' tens of thousands.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "26:53",
   "quote": "You can do the best product in the world with far fewer people.",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "Extreme vertical integration — 'the best vendor is no vendor' — yields both more performance and faster time to market.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "vertical integration",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "27:27",
   "quote": "it's also the best vendor is no vendor",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "Etched is the only startup currently building both its own rack and its own chips, and it did both at the same time.",
   "stance": "assertion",
   "conviction": 0.7,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "27:27",
   "quote": "I think we're the only startup right now that's building its own rack as well as its own chips.",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "The winning talent model pairs industry legends who know what good looks like with extremely driven young engineers who take aggressive risks — neither works without the other.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "recruiting",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "31:34",
   "quote": "you need the extremely driven people that just keep asking why and don't know where the bodies are buried to like take tons of aggressive risks. And then you need the people who've seen scale and still have the startup scrappy mentality",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Gavin Uberti",
   "claim": "Etched's contrarian status self-selects deeply diligent, truth-seeking hires, and announcing more of the product and specs risks losing that filter.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.6,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "recruiting"
   ],
   "timestamp": "32:47",
   "quote": "it's one of the things I worry about as we announce more and more of the product and the specs. We may lose some of this if we're not very careful",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Gavin Uberti",
   "claim": "Fast, delegated decision-making — being right most of the time immediately — beats waiting for the perfect answer every time; speed wins.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "37:01",
   "quote": "I would have much, much rather be right most of the time and give an answer immediately than wait every time for the perfect response",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "Willingness to spend money should be extremely high when the ROI is clear, because with over a billion dollars of daily revenue in the category, every day not shipping forfeits enormous opportunity.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "inference"
   ],
   "timestamp": "38:34",
   "quote": "So your willingness to spend money should be extremely high if you can get a very clear ROI out of it.",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "At a given level of interactivity, Etched's hardware delivers roughly an order of magnitude more concurrency, which translates directly into tokens per watt and tokens per dollar.",
   "stance": "assertion",
   "conviction": 0.8,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "inference"
   ],
   "timestamp": "44:06",
   "quote": "our hardware is going to generally be able to get you an order of magnitude, more concurrency at a given level of interactivity",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Gavin Uberti",
   "claim": "Etched designs its profiling and debugging tools for AI-model users first and human users second, because models will do more and more of the kernel work.",
   "stance": "assertion",
   "conviction": 0.8,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "kernels",
    "AI models"
   ],
   "timestamp": "50:02",
   "quote": "We think about it from how will the model use these tools? More than we think about how will humans use these tools?",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "The right game selection was to skip building an arbitrary graph compiler and instead bet that under 100 mathematically similar models would matter, accelerating those with physics-level primitives.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "AI models"
   ],
   "timestamp": "51:31",
   "quote": "we envisioned a world where there was going to be under 100 models that actually mattered",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "In-house hyperscaler and lab chips (TPU, MTIA, Maia, Jalapeño) are not existential to their companies, which is why the best chip in the world is built by a company that only builds that chip.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "Nvidia",
    "Google",
    "OpenAI",
    "Etched",
    "AI chips"
   ],
   "timestamp": "55:43",
   "quote": "It is completely unsurprising that the best chip in the world is built by a company that only builds that chip. It's Nvidia, right?",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Patrick O'Shaughnessy",
   "claim": "A team's accumulated evidence of solving seemingly impossible problems is near-binary — companies either have it or they don't — and is one of the most interesting assets a company can have.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.8,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "investing"
   ],
   "timestamp": "1:11:21",
   "quote": "the accumulated evidence of your guys' and your team's ability to solve seemingly impossible problems, is one of the most interesting things a company can have",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "The next-generation design priority is simplicity and producibility at gigawatt scale, because availability decides deployment — the best ability is availability.",
   "stance": "assertion",
   "conviction": 0.85,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "tokens"
   ],
   "timestamp": "1:13:36",
   "quote": "We need to be able to be building a product that is producible at gigawatts per month from the limit.",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "Running a majority of the world's tokens requires exactly three things: the most flops in a given power budget, the lowest chip-to-chip latency (biggest scale-up domain), and maximum production volume.",
   "stance": "assertion",
   "conviction": 0.9,
   "subjects": [
    "inference",
    "AI chips",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "1:13:36",
   "quote": "if you want to run a majority of the tokens in the world, you need to do three things. You need to build a chip with the most flops and a given power budget. You need to build a chip that has the lowest latency between other chips, so the biggest scale-up domain possible, and you need to produce as much of it as possible",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Rob Wachen",
   "claim": "AI chip supply is not zero-sum: because Etched built gen-1 on a different supply chain than Nvidia's Rubin, customer deployments are additive — two gigawatts rather than a choice between one or the other.",
   "stance": "assertion",
   "conviction": 0.8,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "Nvidia",
    "supply chain"
   ],
   "timestamp": "1:15:31",
   "quote": "So it actually is not a zero-something. It's a positive something.",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "holder": "Gavin Uberti",
   "claim": "The natural business boundaries follow economies of scale: chip fabrication at the bottom and the model layer at the top have huge scale economies, so Etched fills the entire gap between them.",
   "stance": "opinion",
   "conviction": 0.8,
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "vertical integration",
    "economies of scale"
   ],
   "timestamp": "54:44",
   "quote": "We think the natural boundaries are on the chip side, on the bottom, and the model layer at the top. We'll fill the whole gap between.",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  }
 ],
 "predictions": [],
 "facts": [
  {
   "statement": "Etched has more than $1 billion of customer demand for its first product and has raised $800 million to build it.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "value": "$1B+ demand; $800M raised",
   "timestamp": "2:21",
   "quote": "They already have more than a billion dollars of customer demand for their first product and have raised $800 million to build it.",
   "source": "Patrick O'Shaughnessy",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched taped out a working chip on its first attempt — the first hardware company founded after ChatGPT to do so.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "2:21",
   "quote": "taping out a working chip on their first attempt and becoming the first hardware company founded after ChatGPT to do so",
   "source": "Patrick O'Shaughnessy",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched was started in 2023 and its first product is a complete rack for inference — chip, boards, power delivery, interconnects, and manufacturing.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "Sohu"
   ],
   "value": "founded 2023",
   "timestamp": "2:21",
   "quote": "They started the company in 2023 and the product is a complete rack for Inference.",
   "source": "Patrick O'Shaughnessy",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched built a fully custom interconnect stack (everything above ethernet layer two) that cuts chip-to-chip latency by more than a factor of 5x.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "cluster scale memory"
   ],
   "value": ">5x latency reduction",
   "timestamp": "12:29",
   "quote": "We can go ahead and cut this by more than a factor of 5x",
   "source": "Gavin Uberti",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched's first-generation low-voltage inference technology runs at under half the voltage of any other AI chip.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "low voltage inference"
   ],
   "value": "under half the voltage",
   "timestamp": "13:57",
   "quote": "We're now bringing forward the first generation of this low-voltage inference technology, which is running at under half the voltage of any other AI chip.",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Rob Wachen ran the startup incubator Prod, whose earliest companies included Cursor (merged with Polysphere), Mercor, and Etched itself.",
   "subjects": [
    "Prod",
    "Cursor",
    "Mercor",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "20:53",
   "quote": "Some of the earliest ones being Cursor and Polysphere which merged and Mercor and Etched went through it",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Mark Ross, former CTO of Cypress Semiconductor (which sold for $9 billion), went from telling the founders it would not work to becoming Etched's full-time CTO.",
   "subjects": [
    "Mark Ross",
    "Etched",
    "Cypress Semiconductor"
   ],
   "value": "$9B (Cypress sale)",
   "timestamp": "6:02",
   "quote": "used to be CTO at Cypress Semi, that sold for nine billion dollars",
   "source": "Gavin Uberti",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Brian Loyler, who built all of Nvidia's HGX and DGX systems (about 80% of Nvidia's revenue, tens of billions of dollars a quarter), joined Etched to build its rack team.",
   "subjects": [
    "Brian Loyler",
    "Nvidia",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "value": "~80% of Nvidia revenue (HGX/DGX)",
   "timestamp": "27:27",
   "quote": "we brought over Brian Loyler, who built all of NVIDIA's HGX and DGX systems, which is like 80% of their revenue",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched has a factory in Taiwan with a few dozen people and a 2-megawatt data center on its office floor running 24-7 day/night development shifts.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "Taiwan"
   ],
   "value": "2 MW office data center",
   "timestamp": "27:27",
   "quote": "We have a 2-megawatt data center on this floor, and we did 24-7 development cycles.",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "When a vendor fell a year behind, Etched shipped a dozen of its top engineers to Bangalore for six months (Gavin lived there four and a half months) rather than accept the delay.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "Bangalore"
   ],
   "timestamp": "34:51",
   "quote": "We went out and shipped a dozen of our top engineers across the world to Bangalore for six months.",
   "source": "Gavin Uberti",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Before silicon returned, Etched put the entire full reticle chip on a cluster of over 700 FPGAs and ran a dozen models with its full inference stack, and shipped chipless racks with networking, CPUs, and storage to customer data centers.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "FPGAs",
    "prefetching"
   ],
   "value": "700+ FPGAs",
   "timestamp": "38:34",
   "quote": "we took over 700 FPGAs and put the entire full reticle chip on an FPGA cluster and ran a dozen different models with our full inference stack on them before the chips came back",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched went from getting silicon back to running inference in a rack in 40 days.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "Sohu"
   ],
   "value": "40 days",
   "timestamp": "38:34",
   "quote": "We were able to do it in 40 days.",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "TSMC ran a yield experiment on its own dime at Etched's recommendation and, when it worked, moved the rest of the line over.",
   "subjects": [
    "TSMC",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "41:42",
   "quote": "they will go run an experiment on their own dime",
   "source": "Gavin Uberti",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "To fix a back-pressure failure across a clock domain crossing, Etched had to align two on-chip clock signals to within 50 picoseconds, on every chip, two billion times a second — solved in about two weeks.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "Sohu"
   ],
   "value": "50 picoseconds",
   "timestamp": "57:50",
   "quote": "we had to go line up two clock signals on our chip to within 50 picoseconds",
   "source": "Gavin Uberti",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "During chip bring-up, Etched ran about 30 different board experiments and three of them worked.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "value": "3 of 30 experiments",
   "timestamp": "59:57",
   "quote": "30 different board experiments, and three of them worked",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "In early 2024 Etched projected spending $100 million in the following 12 months, against $15 million in the bank.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "value": "$100M planned spend",
   "timestamp": "1:02:30",
   "quote": "we think we're going to spend $100 million in the next 12 months",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched's Series A came together as roughly $103 million in soft commits after every major Valley investor initially passed; the company has raised almost half a dozen rounds since.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched"
   ],
   "value": "$103M Series A",
   "timestamp": "1:04:11",
   "quote": "We had a board meeting, I show you the spreadsheet and we look at it and it's like $103 million.",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Synopsys let pre-Series-A Etched take its emulators on extremely favorable terms, paying over many years — effectively a big loan.",
   "subjects": [
    "Synopsys",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "1:05:59",
   "quote": "went ahead and let us get some of their emulators on extremely favorable terms where we'd pay over many years",
   "source": "Gavin Uberti",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "In an internal experiment, Codex got GPT-OSS running on Etched's stack from scratch, overnight, using only their docs, completely by itself.",
   "subjects": [
    "Codex",
    "GPT-OSS",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "timestamp": "51:31",
   "quote": "we had Codex actually get GPT-OSS running from scratch just based off of our docs, completely by itself",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Dozens of people from high-frequency trading firms have joined Etched, drawn by its kernels-first, no-compiler philosophy.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "high-frequency trading"
   ],
   "timestamp": "51:31",
   "quote": "we've had dozens of people from high-frequency trading join the team",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Etched's first-gen product uses a different supply chain than Nvidia's Rubin — 4nm versus Rubin's 3nm, and a different HBM.",
   "subjects": [
    "Etched",
    "Nvidia",
    "supply chain",
    "Rubin"
   ],
   "value": "4nm vs 3nm",
   "timestamp": "1:15:31",
   "quote": "We're on four nanometer Rubens on three nanometer.",
   "source": "Rob Wachen",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  },
  {
   "statement": "Patrick O'Shaughnessy has invested in Etched about five times since 2023; at the time it was his largest-ever first check.",
   "subjects": [
    "Patrick O'Shaughnessy",
    "Etched"
   ],
   "value": "~5 investments",
   "timestamp": "1:10:43",
   "quote": "I think I've invested five or so times in Etched.",
   "source": "Patrick O'Shaughnessy",
   "episode_id": "invest-like-the-best-2026-06-30-etched-building-ai-hardware-to-make-inference-faster-and-che",
   "published_at": "2026-06-30"
  }
 ],
 "first_seen": "2026-06-30",
 "last_seen": "2026-06-30"
}