Nvidia competitor Etched hits $5B valuation, $1B in sales for AI chip; plus, Indian tech tycoon bets $30M of his own money to build AI alternative to Microsoft Office

Nvidia competitor Etched hits $5B valuation, $1B in sales for AI chip; plus, Indian tech tycoon bets $30M of his own money to build AI alternative to Microsoft Office

Nvidia AI chip competitor Etched says it has already booked $1 billion under contract for the inference systems powered by its chip. Also, Neo is Bhavin Turakhia’s fifth venture and his latest involving enterprise software. This time he's taking on Microsoft Office, Google Apps with AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

Arena, the AI leaderboard everyone uses, is now a $100M business

The startup, which runs a popular free AI leaderboard, launched its commercial service just last September. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

Corgi says it didn’t steal an open source product; plus, Omen AI’s plan to optimize data centers is all wet

Corgi became embroiled in controversy when Papermark accused it of stealing its software. Corgi says it did not, raising new questions about vibe coding. Also, Omen AI raised a $31 million Series A to monitor chip coolant and stop bacterial outbreaks in data centers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

Robotaxis drive miles just to get cleaned and charged; Aseon Labs wants to fix that; plus, General Intuition bets that video games can train AI agents for the real world

Aseon Labs, which came out of Y Combinator's 2026 spring cohort, has raised $10 million from Crane Venture Partners and others. Also, General Intuition has raised $320 million to scale AI trained on millions of hours of gameplay, betting action data can help AI develop something closer to human intuition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

Slate Auto’s radically simple electric truck starts at $24,950; also, Valor Equity Partners looks to raise a $2.5B Fund VII

The Jeff Bezos-backed startup finally revealed more pricing details for its debut EV, including a $29,950 starting price for the SUV variant, and boosted the base range to 205 miles. Plus, new details have emerged about Valor's latest fund, which last year announced it was raising an unspecified amount of capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]