Etched: Harvard Dropouts Hit $10.3B in 7 Months

Three founders dropped out, slept on floors, ran chip servers in a garage. Now: $300M Series C at $10.3B valuation.

What: AI inference chips that run any model faster than GPUs. Already booked $1B in customer orders.

How it happened:
- 2022: Dropped out, zero fundraising experience
- 2024: Shipped silicon, showed demos to Karpathy and Hinton
- 2025: $1B in contracts signed
- 2026: 400+ engineers, 10MW data center, $300M raise

Key lesson: Customer proof before scale. Skeptics don't matter when you have $1B in orders.

Brewed by Startup Beaker.

#AIInfra #Founders