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Wachen: In-House AI Chip Failure Is Not Existential for Hyperscalers or OpenAI

Rob Wachen · The Two Harvard Dropouts Who raised $800M to take on NVIDIA · Invest Like The Best · Jun 30, 2026 · at 56:21

Rob Wachen, co-founder of AI chip startup Etched, explains why dedicated chip companies like Nvidia and Etched operate with higher urgency than tech giants building custom silicon.

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“Meta won't fail if MTIA fails, Microsoft won't fail if Maya fails, and OpenAI won't fail if Jalapeno fails.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Rob Wachen

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wachen: AI agents will outnumber human knowledge workers by 2027
“I think this is the second to last year where a majority of the workforce is going to be human. I think in 20, 27, you're going to see there's going to be more agents doing knowledge work than humans, and it's going to be extremely interesting to see what happ…”
Rob Wachen Jun 30, 2026 ▶ 1:25:00 The Two Harvard Dropouts Who raised $800M to take on NVIDIA · Invest Like The Best
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wachen: The Largest Token Producer Will Be the World's Most Valuable Company
“Whoever produces the most tokens is going to be the most valuable company in the world.”
Rob Wachen Jun 30, 2026 ▶ 54:15 The Two Harvard Dropouts Who raised $800M to take on NVIDIA · Invest Like The Best
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wachen: AI inference will eventually make up the majority of global GDP
“I firmly believe we are on a global march of inference becoming majority of global GDP. And it may take more than 10 years, but it's going to happen.”
Rob Wachen Jun 30, 2026 ▶ 1:24:40 The Two Harvard Dropouts Who raised $800M to take on NVIDIA · Invest Like The Best
Insight
Wachen: The semiconductor stack is over-buffered for general-purpose use cases
“The entire semiconductors and data center industry is built on buffer. And what I mean by that is every part of the stack from the EDA tools to the power modules, to the circuit boards, to the chip design and standard cells, everything is built to be general p…”
Rob Wachen Jun 30, 2026 ▶ 2:27 The Two Harvard Dropouts Who raised $800M to take on NVIDIA · Invest Like The Best
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wachen: All AI chips in the future will be low-voltage
“And we think all AI chips in the future are going to be low voltage chips. They're going to have to cram way more flops in the same silicon area, and without thermal throttling run at way lower voltages.”
Rob Wachen Jun 30, 2026 ▶ 10:10 The Two Harvard Dropouts Who raised $800M to take on NVIDIA · Invest Like The Best
Disclosure
Wachen: Etched AI chip operates at under half the voltage of rivals
“We're now bringing forward our first generation of this low voltage inference technology Which is running at under half the voltage of any other AI chip.”
Rob Wachen Jun 30, 2026 ▶ 12:23 The Two Harvard Dropouts Who raised $800M to take on NVIDIA · Invest Like The Best
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