Two months after raising 21 billion, Etched is receiving offers valuing the start-up at between 40 and 50 billion dollars

The inference chip designer is considering proposals from investors that would at least double its valuation. Etched already claims to have a billion dollars’ worth of orders.

Etched, the young company that designs its own chips dedicated to inference, is reportedly considering investment offers valuing it between $40 billion and $50 billion, according to sources cited by TechCrunch. The lowest proposals come from top-tier funds, the highest from lesser-known investors. The discussions are still in the early stages and the company declined to comment.

The pace is dizzying: Etched announced $300 million at a valuation of $10.3 billion in July, then $700 million at $21 billion in September, a round led by the trading company Jane Street. The company is also a customer and received one of the first systems. The company claims to have garnered $1 billion in orders after having its test chip produced by TSMC this summer.

A costly bet against Nvidia

Etched doesn't just design chips: it builds complete systems, which consumes a lot of capital. A round equivalent to the previous one would give it up to three and a half years of cash. The start-up, founded four years ago by Harvard alumni, has about 400 employees, nearly 15% of whom have worked for Nvidia, operates a 10 MW data center in Silicon Valley and has opened a site in Taiwan to monitor production.