a16z backs Etched’s bet that AI inference will define the next computing era
a16z · x · 2026-07-23
a16z’s Sarah Wang and Raghu Raghuram argue that AI inference may be the most consequential workload of the era, and frame Etched as a company betting on that thesis.
The quoted article traces Etched’s origin story: in 2022, before ChatGPT and before tools like Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex, founders Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen, and Chris Zhu dropped out of Harvard to build an entire inference stack from scratch — chips, boards, interconnects, and racks.
The piece argues that in a world where production is the product and the machine is the moat, specialized inference infrastructure could become the defining bet.
More from Infra
- RTK Terminal Compression Cuts Tokens but Leaves Your AI Coding Bill Unchanged — Bartaseth · 2026-09-11
- SF Compute founder: buying compute is 'an absolutely awful experience' right now — IgorCarron · 2026-09-11
- SmolVM open-sources persistent computer infrastructure for agents that outlive chat sessions — aniketmaurya · 2026-09-11
- PyTorch Day Korea 2026 launches first offline conf, CFP closes Sept 13 — PyTorch · 2026-09-11
- Local LLM server dilemma: 4x CMP-170HX (price up 53% in 20 days) vs Mac Studio M5 Ultra — rumboll · 2026-09-11
- llama.cpp lands Flash Attention tuning for RDNA4, big prefill gains on AMD — pmttyji · 2026-09-11