How 3 Harvard dropouts 'Etched' a $20 billion company in just 4 months

Etched, a semiconductor startup founded by Harvard dropouts Gavin Uberti, Chris Zhu and Robert Wachen, is valued at about $21 billion after moving from an idea to working silicon in just four months. All three founders are 24 and met at Harvard in Math 55. The company says it reached a fully integrated computing system, landed a major customer and surpassed $1 billion in orders—an unusually fast timeline in a sector where mistakes can cost millions, years of engineering and sometimes the failure of the entire business. Etched’s approach centers on its motto “Production is the product,” investing tens of millions in diagnostic equipment, software and custom server racks, including a 2-megawatt data center, to accelerate development and testing.