US chip designer Etched announced this week that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) had manufactured its first chip earlier this year. While the four-year-old startup valued at $5 billion is gearing up to ship systems powered by that chip to customers later this summer, scaling production could prove challenging. Like other chip designers, Etched must compete for limited capacity at TSMC’s Taiwan factories.
One of Etched’s early investors, Copper Sky Capital, hopes the chipmaker will find a solution to its manufacturing constraints by eventually producing chips at TSMC’s Arizona facility. Copper Sky founder Jack Selby, a former PayPal executive and managing director to Peter Thiel’s family office, had secured an allocation in part by promising to help the startup eventually reshore its chip fabrication to Arizona.
