# Gavin Uberti

> Gavin Uberti is the co-founder and CEO of Etched, a Cupertino-based AI chip startup building the world's first transformer-specific ASIC called Sohu. A Harvard dropout and 2024 Thiel Fellow, Uberti co-founded Etched in 2022 alongside Chris Zhu and Robert Wachen after betting that transformer architecture would dominate AI for years to come. That bet has paid off spectacularly: Etched has raised over $625 million (including a $500M round in January 2026 at a $5 billion valuation), and Sohu claims to run transformer inference 20x faster than Nvidia's H100 at a fraction of the cost - positioning Etched as one of the most serious challengers to Nvidia's dominance in AI compute.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at Etched
- **Organizations:** Etched
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Concurrent Master's and Bachelor's in Computer Science and Mathematics (did not complete - dropped out), Harvard University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Etched and raised over $625M in total funding, Led development of Sohu, the world's first transformer-specific ASIC, Named MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35

## Career timeline

- **2019** — Software Engineering Intern at Xnor.ai (AI hardware/edge inference)
- **2020** — Algorithms and Backend Engineer at Coursedog
- **2021-2022** — Software Engineer at OctoML - built compilers and wrote matmul kernels for Apache TVM compiler
- **2022** — Co-founded Etched with Chris Zhu and Robert Wachen
- **2023-03** — Dropped out of Harvard while completing concurrent Master's/Bachelor's programs
- **2023-04** — Closed $5.36M seed round led by Primary Venture Partners; relocated to Bay Area
- **2024** — Named 2024 Thiel Fellow alongside co-founders Chris Zhu and Robert Wachen
- **2024** — Recognized on MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 list
- **2024-06** — Etched raised $120M Series A; announced Sohu transformer ASIC
- **2025** — Guest lectured at Columbia University and TinyML Summit
- **2026-01** — Etched raised $500M at $5B valuation led by Stripes

## Achievements

- Co-founded Etched and raised over $625M in total funding
- Led development of Sohu, the world's first transformer-specific ASIC
- Named MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35
- 2024 Thiel Fellow
- Grew Etched to 340 employees and a $5 billion valuation by age ~25
- Sohu chip claims 500,000+ tokens/second on Llama 70B - replacing up to 160 Nvidia H100 GPUs with a single 8-chip server
- Rewrote Cortex-M convolution kernel achieving state-of-the-art results on MLPerf Tiny benchmark
- Secured Peter Thiel as investor across multiple rounds

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Etched raised $500M in a new funding round led by Stripes at a $5 billion valuation, with participation from Peter Thiel, Positive Sum, and Ribbit Capital
- **2025-00** — Guest lectured at Columbia University and TinyML Summit on transformer inference hardware
- **2024-06** — Etched publicly unveiled the Sohu chip and announced $120M Series A funding round
- **2024-00** — Named 2024 Thiel Fellow alongside Etched co-founders Chris Zhu and Robert Wachen
- **2024-00** — Recognized on MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 list

## Links

- Website: https://etched.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/guberti
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/ubertigavin
- GitHub: https://github.com/guberti
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gavinuberti

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/gavin-uberti
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-12