Nvidia currently holds an estimated market share of 70% to 95% for AI chips, making it the dominant player in the market. Its GPUs are widely used for training and deploying generative AI models, and the company has seen significant growth in revenue as a result of the increasing demand for AI-powered applications.
Generative AI vendors are dissatisfied with the current market situation because they feel that the dominant chipmakers, such as Nvidia, have too much influence over their success. They believe that the whims of these chipmakers can impact their ability to effectively run their AI models and remain competitive in the industry. This has led to a search for alternative chip solutions that can challenge the current market dynamics and provide more specialized and efficient options for running AI models.
Etched's chips are unique in that they only run a single type of model: transformers. This specialization allows for a streamlined inferencing hardware-and-software pipeline, delivering dramatically better performance than GPUs and other general-purpose AI chips while consuming less energy5.