Episode
The Age of Inference: Etched Startup Proves the Next AI Hotspot
- Podcast
- Limitless: An AI Podcast
- Published
- Jul 7, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1643
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/3b784234
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Summary
Inference is becoming more important than pre-training in AI chips, including how pre-fill and decode work and why more compute is shifting toward serving models. Today we walk through Etched’s ASIC system for transformer inference, its claims around efficiency and throughput, and the tradeoff between specialization and general-purpose GPUs like NVIDIA’s. We also look at custom chip efforts from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Amazon, and argues that inference demand may keep growing as AI agents and long-running workloads expand. ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ EMAIL US: [email protected] NEWSLETTER: https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X: https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED: https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Inference’s New Frontier 2:14 Training Versus Inference 5:19 Etched’s Bold Bet 7:58 Building the Whole Rack 10:48 TSMC and the Hard Problems 13:29 Why Inference Matters 14:59 The Transformer Risk 17:02 OpenAI’s Jalapeno Chip 18:59 Why Accelerators Keep Winning 22:28 The Market Is Underpricing It 23:10 NVIDIA Is Still in the Game 24:56 Vertical Integration Wins ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures Josh works with Anthropic as a contractor. All views expressed are his own and do not represent Anthropic, its leadership, or its affiliates. Nothing in this episode is investment advice.