据知情人士透露，尽管Etched以210亿美元的估值融资7亿美元才几个月，但这家人工智能芯片初创公司已经收到了价值两倍或更高的投资要约。
Although it’s only been a couple of months since Etched raised $700 million at a $21 billion valuation, the AI chip startup is already being plied with investment offers at double or more its value, according to people familiar with the company.
一位人士表示，Etched正在审查即将到来的出价，从顶级投资者的400亿美元到鲜为人知的支持者的500亿美元不等。这些筹款谈判还为时过早，因此任何交易的条款，如果发生，都可能会改变。Etched拒绝发表评论。
Etched is reviewing incoming bids that range from $40 billion from top-tier investors to $50 billion from lesser-known backers, one person said. These fundraising talks are early, so terms of any deal, should one happen, may change. Etched declined to comment.
虽然这似乎是筹集另一轮巨额融资的快速时间表，但Etched正在寻求人工智能行业中一个特别昂贵的领域：构建由其自己的专有芯片驱动的完整人工智能硬件系统。熟悉这些报价的人士表示，如果它筹集到上一轮的资金，这可能会给Etched带来长达3.5年的跑道缓冲。
While this may seem like a fast time-table to raise another mega round, Etched is pursuing a particularly expensive segment of the AI industry: building full AI hardware systems powered by its own proprietary chips. The person familiar with these offers said that if it raises as much as its last round, this could give Etched a cushion of as much as 3.5 years of runway.
风险投资者热衷于拥有Etched股份是有原因的。这家成立四年的初创公司展现了挑战英伟达的承诺。量化交易公司Jane Street不仅领导了上一轮7亿美元的融资，而且还是一位交付了早期系统的客户。Etched在7月份表示，今年夏天在台积电工厂生产测试芯片后，该公司已经获得了10亿美元的客户订单，其中包括来自Jane Street的订单。
There are reasons why VCs are hot to own a piece of Etched. The four-year-old startup shows promise of challenging Nvidia. Not only did quant trading firm Jane Street lead the last $700 million round, it is also a customer that took delivery of an early system. Etched said in July that it had already secured $1 billion in customer orders, including the one from Jane Street, after manufacturing its test chip at a TSMC factory this summer.
联合创始人兼首席运营官罗伯特·瓦琴（Robert Wachen）此前告诉TechCrunch，投资者如此热情，因为Etched从头设计了两个新组件来加速推理--用户提交提示后发生的计算过程。
Co-founder and COO Robert Wachen previously told TechCrunch that investors are so enthusiastic because Etched has designed two new components from scratch to speed up inference — the computing process that happens after a user submits a prompt.
该公司声称，其芯片可以比Nvidia更快、更低的成本处理更多代币。这就是其处理器对Jane Street如此有吸引力的原因，对Jane Street来说，速度上的微观优势可以带来巨额利润。
The company claims its chips can process more tokens faster and at a lower cost than Nvidia’s. That’s the reason its processors have been so attractive to Jane Street for whom a microscopic advantage in speed can yield massive profits.
据《华尔街日报》报道，这家初创公司吸引英伟达工程师的能力也给投资者留下了深刻印象，Etched的400名员工中约有15%曾在这家芯片巨头工作过。
The startup has also impressed investors with its ability to attract engineers from Nvidia, with roughly 15% of Etched’s 400-person workforce having previously worked at the chip giant, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Etched还在硅谷运营一个新的10兆瓦数据中心，并在台湾建立了一个工厂，以协调台积电附近的生产。
Etched also operates a new 10-megawatt datacenter in Silicon Valley and established a facility in Taiwan to coordinate production near TSMC.
联合创始人Gavin Uberti和Chris Zhu在哈佛大学的一门高级数学课程上相识，而Wachen是Uberti的室友，他们辍学去追求公司。
Co-founders Gavin Uberti and Chris Zhu famously met in an advanced math course at Harvard, while Wachen was Uberti’s roommate and they dropped out to pursue the company.
就估值大幅跃升的快速融资而言，Etched已经有了这样的历史。这家初创公司在7月份宣布了一轮3亿美元的融资，由Sequoia领投，融资额为103亿美元。它在9月份宣布了7亿美元的融资，估值为210亿美元。连续融资轮本质上是一笔单一融资，分为两部分，估值独立，在最热门的初创公司中越来越常见。
In terms of fast rounds at big leaps in valuations, Etched already has a history of them. The startup announced a $300 million round at a $10.3 billion led by Sequoia in July. It announced the $700 million round at a $21 billion valuation in September. Back-to-back funding rounds, which essentially act as a single financing split into two tranches with separate valuations, are increasingly common among the buzziest startups.