---
title: 'Firmware Engineer at Etched'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/firmware-engineer-etched-cupertino-46s2vp3hh012'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Firmware Engineer at Etched

- **Company:** Etched
- **Location:** Cupertino, CA
- **Posted:** 2024-12-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/etchedai/jobs/4595549007

## Job description

Etched was founded on the belief that new hardware will be needed to run human- and superhuman-level artificial intelligence. Our ASIC systems deliver orders of magnitude higher performance than conventional AI chips. Etched is actively developing [Sohu](https://www.etched.com/), an ASIC exclusively for transformers, which will enable products that would be impossible with GPUs, like [real-time video generation models](https://twitter.com/Etched/status/1852089772329869436) and extremely deep chain-of-thought reasoning. And we're bringing this technology to market in months, not years. Sohu is hard-coded for individual model architectures and only supports transformers, but has an order of magnitude more throughput and lower latency than a B200.

## WHAT YOU’LL DO

- Co-Develop cutting-edge software optimized across hardware and software driving the full potential of very large transformer models.
- Solve challenging problems across the full stack, from low-level drivers and APIs to high-level applications and frameworks.
- Contribute to the development of AI solutions that will revolutionize industries like natural language processing, chain of reasoning automation, generative media.

## BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
- 3 years of experience in software development, and with data structures/algorithms.
- 3 years of experience developing and testing software on launching products.
- 3 years of experience with firmware design, implementation, and troubleshooting.
- 3 years of experience with embedded architectures, IO technologies (I2C, SPI, PCIe, DRAM etc.), as well as concepts like scalability, fault tolerance, and consistency.

Preferred qualifications:

- Master’s degree Computer Science, or a related technical field.
- Experience resolving customer-related issues.
- Experience solving ambiguous problems.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Why Etched.ai?

- Be part of a dynamic startup that's changing the landscape of AI.
- Work on the most advanced AI hardware in the world.
- Enjoy a competitive salary and benefits package.
- Make a meaningful contribution to the future of technology.

If you're a talented software engineer who's excited to shape the future of AI, we encourage you to apply!

To Apply:

Please visit our website at [etched.ai/careers](https://www.etched.com/careers) to submit your resume and cover letter.

Location: Cupertino, California

## About Etched

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Etched builds specialized ASIC chips (the "Sohu" chip) designed exclusively for transformer-based AI models, aiming to deliver dramatically faster and more cost-efficient inference than general-purpose GPUs like Nvidia's.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B / Venture Round)
- **Headquarters**: San Jose, California, United States (primary HQ); also has a major office in Cupertino, CA, and offices in Taiwan, Canada, the UK, and Bulgaria.
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Gavin Uberti (CEO), Chris Zhu (Co-Founder), Robert Wachen (Co-Founder & President)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Computer Hardware Manufacturing, AI Infrastructure, Semiconductor Design
- **Target customers**: B2B; Enterprise AI labs, large language model (LLM) companies, cloud providers, and hyperscalers needing high-performance inference compute.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Building the hardware for superintelligence." The company's stated goal is to enable the next generation of AI models by solving the inference bottleneck.

## Products & Services
- **[Sohu ASIC Chip]**: A custom-designed "Transformer ASIC" that is hardwired to run transformer models (the architecture behind GPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.). It is designed to be orders of magnitude faster and more power-efficient than Nvidia's H100/B200 for inference.
- **[Frontier Inference Clusters]**: Full-stack systems—bundles of Sohu chips, custom-designed racks, and specialized software—sold as turnkey "frontier inference clusters" to customers.
- **[Software Stack]**: A custom compiler and runtime (including a TensorFlow TVM backend) to optimize model deployment on the Sohu hardware.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: $5 billion post-money valuation (as of a $500M round closed in December 2025, announced June 2026).
- **Key Metric**: $1 billion in contract orders for its product (as of June 2026). Annual revenue is reported at $40M (likely pre-revenue or early-stage contract bookings).
- **Total Funding**: $800 million to date.
    - Seed Round (May 2023): $5.4M led by Primary Venture Partners.
    - Series A (June 2024): $120M led by Positive Sum and Primary Venture Partners.
    - Series B / Venture Round (Dec 2025): $500M led by Stripes. Participants include VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, Ribbit Capital.
    - Angel Investors: Andrej Karpathy, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Arthur Mensch (Mistral CEO), Scott Wu (Cognition CEO), Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Thiel.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Stripes, Primary Venture Partners, Positive Sum, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, Ribbit Capital, VentureTech Alliance.
- **Growth Signals**
    - Headcount: 258 employees (+141% YoY growth).
    - Chip successfully manufactured by TSMC in early 2026.
    - $1B in customer orders already booked.
    - Growing team of ex-Apple, ex-Google, ex-Nvidia, ex-Intel talent.
    - 100 active job postings with high growth in hiring.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Architecture Moat**: Unlike GPUs that are general-purpose, the Sohu chip is a fixed-function ASIC that only runs transformer models. This allows it to be 10-100x more efficient on the dominant AI workload (inference) than any GPU.
- **First-Mover in a New Category**: If transformer models remain the dominant architecture (as most experts believe), Etched has a multi-year lead in designing silicon specifically for them.
- **Elite Team**: Founders are Harvard dropouts and Thiel Fellows. The engineering team includes top talent from Nvidia (including the architect of the HGX/DGX systems), Google (TPU team, DeepMind), Apple (iPhone silicon), Intel, and Broadcom. The team has deep experience shipping complex chips at scale.
- **Investor Signal**: Backing from top-tier AI researchers (Hinton, Karpathy, Li) and quantitative trading firms (Jane Street, Hudson River) signals deep technical and financial credibility.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale Production**: Moving from TSMC tape-out to volume manufacturing of the Sohu chip.
- **Deliver Clusters**: Fulfilling the $1B order book by shipping complete inference clusters to customers.
- **Build the Team**: Aggressively hiring across hardware (ASIC, PCB, physical design), software (inference, firmware, ML research), and operations (supply chain, finance, legal) to scale from ~250 to potentially thousands of employees.
- **Achieve "Gigawatt Scale"**: The company's internal mantra ("every decision moves us toward Gigawatt scale") indicates a focus on building infrastructure that can support massive AI workloads.

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact, High-Ambition Environment**: Described as "end-to-end owners" who "own company-critical outcomes." The culture is built for people who want to move fast and solve hard, unsolved problems in AI hardware.
- **Cutting-Edge Tech**: Work on the absolute frontier of chip design and AI inference. The company is building what could be the most important AI chip of the decade.
- **Exceptional Team**: Colleagues include veterans from Nvidia, Apple, Google, and DeepMind. Learning opportunities are immense.
- **Rapid Growth**: Headcount is doubling annually, offering significant career growth and ownership opportunities for early hires.
- **Culture Mantras**: "Production is the product," "Build the machine" (team-building is as important as the hardware).
- **Work Policy**: Primarily on-site in Cupertino/San Jose, CA. The company emphasizes in-person collaboration for hardware development.
- **Notable Perks**: Working on a mission to build "the hardware for superintelligence" with massive financial backing and a clear product-market fit signal ($1B in orders).

## Sources
1. [TechCrunch - Nvidia competitor Etched hits $5B valuation](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/30/nvidia-competitor-etched-hits-5b-valuation-1b-in-sales-for-ai-chip/)
2. [Etched.com - Careers Page](https://www.etched.com/careers)
3. [LinkedIn - Etched Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/etched-ai)
4. [Greenhouse - Etched Job Board](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/etchedai)

## Other roles at Etched

- [Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/finance-etched-cupertino-q5pr34qq2pq1) — Cupertino, CA
- [Head of PCB Layout & Design Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-pcb-layout-design-infrastructure-etched-cupertino-64hrte8av7r4) — Cupertino, CA
- [Emulation Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/emulation-software-engineer-etched-cupertino-ewh85c1azrp0) — Cupertino, CA
- [Core Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/core-operations-etched-cupertino-thxbnhr8sfka) — Cupertino, CA
- [Front-End CAD Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/front-end-cad-engineer-etched-cupertino-xe530w183ytw) — Cupertino, CA
- [Power Optimization Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/power-optimization-engineer-etched-cupertino-4r5snp027zqh) — Cupertino, CA
- [Front-End Power Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/front-end-power-engineer-etched-cupertino-f4xpz8s8xhnt) — Cupertino, CA
- [Inference Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/inference-software-engineer-etched-cupertino-mn7xst9k2h5e) — Cupertino, CA
- [PCB Hardware Validation Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/pcb-hardware-validation-engineer-etched-cupertino-rk48ajsz38v9) — Cupertino, CA
- [Head of Legal](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-legal-etched-cupertino-pm15zcke4y2t) — Cupertino, CA