Deviation

In pursuit of the exceptions. Early-stage VC backing technical founders harnessing the accelerating forces of data and computing.

[Deviation @deviationcap]

Introducing Deviation Capital.

Era-defining companies are the exception. They break almost every rule of conventional wisdom as they rise, but start the same way. A founder encounters something broken, invents a way forward others couldn't see, and bets everything on bringing it to life.

We launch today as the spinout of Two Sigma Ventures to find, fund, and support these founders, backing technical teams harnessing data and computing to build enduring exceptions.

[Walden Robotics @WaldenRobotics]

What does it take to get robots out of the lab and onto the factory floor?

Our CEO @RussTedrake joined @BradPorter_ on Deployed to talk DARPA lessons, wheels vs. legs, factory safety, and why deployment is all about the details.

https://t.co/1kIj5CzJjz

[Colin Beirne @csbeirne]

I've had the privilege to back @bsofman at two companies now, and I'm convinced that he the team @BedrockRobotics are unlocking the ability for America to build the infrastructure necessary for continued global leadership and prosperity. I got to attend part of their team's kickoff offsite two years ago, and the amazing thing is - they have achieved WHAT they said they would, WHEN they said they would! Onto the next chapter, with more autonomous machines across more sites, solving a critical labor gap, and building our future. Bravo. Proud investor @deviationcap

[Colin Beirne @csbeirne]

I was lucky to be introduced to the @Etched founders in March 2024. A couple of weeks later at the full team pitch, our (then TSV) team recorded our votes and comments as usual before speaking and influencing each other. Looking back on that survey, many people mentioned that the valuation felt very high (in the low 100s of millions) for where they were at the time and the competition, and how chips are hard. But every single person wrote about what an incredible young team they were and had assembled: "incredibly impressive team", "have attracted great talent", "very impressive founders", "transformative company". In venture it's so easy to talk yourself out of something, because the risks are everywhere. I'm glad on this one we let the strength of these founders overcome any skepticism, because they have proven to be way more talented than even we thought. Proud to have them in the @deviationcap portfolio.

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

Jane Street has installed Etched's first shipped AI cluster system, and was so impressed, it led another massive round, the startup says.
https://t.co/BagoasWIv8

[Colin Beirne @csbeirne]

Rack 'em up! The first of many. Bravo guys. @Etched @deviationcap

[Varun Nair @_varunnair]

@WaldenRobotics one of the best takes on robotics data.

[Walden Robotics @WaldenRobotics]

The future of robotics won't be decided by demos. It'll be decided by what works in the real world. Great conversation with @tbpn on why we're betting on deployment from day one.
https://t.co/fuLxYaQiME

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

AI chip startup Etched defies skeptics, hits $10.3B valuation from big-name investors  https://t.co/wdw97qrIEN

[Colin Beirne @csbeirne]

It’s only been 2.5 years since I met @robertwachen and @UbertiGavin, but it is INCREDIBLE to have watched the rate of growth not just at the company @Etched, but in these guys personally as founders and operators. They have built a 400-person company humming at an incredible velocity of innovation. Speed is their product, not just for the racks they’re now shipping, but for the process of designing and manufacturing the systems that will power inference for decades to come. So impressive and so well deserved. Proud for @deviationcap to have been involved since the A.

[Jonathan Golden @jpgg]

Pumped that @deviationcap is a Series A investor in @Etched! Thanks @csbeirne for partnering with them so early in their journey and believing at inception!

[Bilal Zuberi // Red Glass Ventures @bznotes]

Great to see @jbotsch from the new fund Deviation Capital (former Two Sigma). He has spent a bunch of time in robotics, up and down the stack...and recently led their investment into @WaldenRobotics.

[Deviation @deviationcap]

Congrats to Deviation portfolio company @Etched on hitting another milestone on their relentless sprint to unlock humanity-scale AI.

The scale and speed of progress this team has made will be studied.

> hit A0 (first-try) success on their chips
> signed $1B+ in customer contracts
> assembled a team pulled from every major AI chip program (NVIDIA, Google TPU, Broadcom, SK Hynix, TSMC)
> unveiled two new compute paradigms improving throughput and latency
> landed their vertically integrated frontier inference clusters in customers' hands

...all in under 3 years

Generational team on a generational run.

[Etched @Etched]

We’ve raised $300M in Series C funding at a $10.3B valuation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Jane Street, Argo, and SK Hynix.

Our mission is to run the world's inference. This round accelerates production of our inference clusters.

We've opened an 80,000-sqft, 10-MW facility 15 minutes from our office to expedite production and prototyping.

[Deviation @deviationcap]

@bznotes @jbotsch @WaldenRobotics the matching glasses 🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼

[Adrien Gaidon @adnothing]

The hardest problems in AI aren't research problems anymore. They're deployment problems. It’s how we actually deliver real value, today, to build the future people want.

That’s why, after 20 years in AI, my next step was inevitable: make robots do useful work for and alongside people, right now.

Today, I am delighted to announce the launch of @WaldenRobotics to tackle just that.

We started this year and are coming out of stealth today with a $300M seed round backed by some of the most serious companies and investors in the world. They have seen firsthand our general-purpose robots being useful in production on day one, and getting better every day after. You can see a glimpse of what we've been building in the video below.

Physical AI has gone through a rapid phase transition, in part thanks to pioneering research from my friends and co-founders @RussTedrake , @Ben_Burchfiel , Siyuan Feng, @RaresAmbrus , and many others at Walden. But from our long experience working together with co-founders Kerri Fetzer-Borelli and Dave Johnson, we learned how hard it is to deploy cutting-edge AI in a real, live, incredibly sophisticated production environment with an intricate ballet of automation and human ingenuity.

That’s why we deliberately created Walden Robotics as a full-stack, human-centric, customer-focused robotics company from the start: we seeded the company with a world-class team across hardware, software, AI, deployment, operations, product, and business talent, so we could continuously optimize our whole system end-to-end, deeply and purposefully, from real-world experience with real customers.

The efficacy of this strategy speaks for itself: since February, our general-purpose robots have been doing useful work in production at a Toyota plant in North America, moving from first pilot to real work in under two months. Not a lab. Not a demo. Not a future promise. Real work on a real line, today, at one of the best large-scale manufacturers in the world, with general-purpose robots that get better every day. And this is just the beginning.

Two ways to find us:

If you run a manufacturing or logistics business and want robots that are widely useful now, not someday, let's talk. We own “https://t.co/v05QGyG7pC” for a reason!

And if you want to build them: we're hiring across the company, from software, to hardware, AI, ops, product, business, and more. In particular, as the Chief Strategy Officer at Walden, I am recruiting for three incredibly impactful founding roles to fuel our agent-native go-to-market engine. Check out https://t.co/Oyxx9DCD4M

Let’s build together!

[Adrien Gaidon @adnothing]

It's a pleasure and privilege to count Russ as a friend and co-founder at @WaldenRobotics Check out his blog below to learn more about our purpose. Our robots are already doing real work for and alongside people today, and we're just getting started. Let's build together!

[Colin Beirne @csbeirne]

Super proud to see @RussTedrake and @WaldenRobotics come out of stealth today, with @deviationcap co-leading their $300m round alongside a phenomenal partner in Toyota. This is a truly generational robotics team who pioneered Diffusion Policy and Large Behavior Models (LBMs) during years that the team was together at Toyota Research Institute, before spinning out earlier this year. All those years of ‘pre-incubation’ of Walden mean that this company has put robots into production within just a few months of being formed - much faster than any company I’ve seen before in this space. Their form factor is perfectly suited to many manufacturing tasks that are bottlenecked today because of lack of available labor. I’ve been looking to back a company like this for years - specifically a wheeled quasi-humanoid that can handle the large amount of smart manufacturing work that is coming back onshore to the U.S. but faces hiring constraints, and I couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect team. I’m tremendously excited to watch them continue to progress.
https://t.co/2jBSjrbQhl

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Three years ago, two Harvard dropouts set out to build a better AI chip than the largest companies in the world.

Almost everyone I called at the time said it was impossible.

Today, Etched (@Etched) comes out of stealth with $800M total raised, $1B in signed customer contracts, and a working next-gen AI chip.

This was my excuse to ask the two founders, @UbertiGavin and @robertwachen, every question I have about compute and inference.

We discuss:
- Why they built an entire rack and not just a chip
- The two technical bets behind their architecture no one else has tried
- How two founders in their twenties recruited industry legends
- The night they nearly ran out of money
- Why whoever produces the most tokens wins

If you care about the future of compute, Gavin and Rob are two people to know. I think you will find the story of what they have built hard to forget.

Enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why Nobody Believed Etched Would Work
14:06 Why Inference Is the Bottleneck
22:27 Gavin and Rob’s Origin Stories
33:24 Taking Huge Risks to Move Faster
49:43 Kernels, Compilers, and the AI Stack
1:02:08 Raising $100M to Survive
1:16:00 The Future of Models, Agents, and Intelligence

[Joe Botsch @jbotsch]

When @karpathy is impressed, it means you are on to something big. Proud to back the @Etched team at @deviationcap!

[Colin Beirne @csbeirne]

This team is ripping! First company shipping a chip designed in the post ChatGPT era. Moving super fast and delivering massive improvements in speed and bandwidth for inferencing. Congrats @UbertiGavin and @robertwachen. Keep going!

[Etched @Etched]

We're coming out of stealth.

We've built our first racks after a successful A0 tapeout, $1B+ in customer contracts, and $800m raised.

Early customer tests show us achieving SOTA throughput, latency, and power efficiency on inference workloads.

Our first racks ship this summer.