I tried starting the emulator from the command line and was able to run is with swiftshader option. But still chromium is crashing. Here's the first indication that there's trouble from adb logcat:
08-15 11:15:05.212 3100 3117 E chromium: [ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(289)] eglChooseConfig failed with error EGL_SUCCESS
08-15 11:15:05.215 3100 3117 E chromium: [ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(289)] eglChooseConfig failed with error EGL_SUCCESS
08-15 11:15:05.233 3100 3117 D EGL_emulation: eglCreateContext: 0xac353160: maj 2 min 0 rcv 2
08-15 11:15:05.234 3100 3117 D EGL_emulation: eglMakeCurrent: 0xac353160: ver 2 0 (tinfo 0xaa94d7f0)
08-15 11:15:05.239 3100 3117 E eglCodecCommon: glUtilsParamSize: unknow param 0x00008cdf
08-15 11:15:05.949 1320 1618 W audio_hw_generic: Not supplying enough data to HAL, expected position 797947 , only wrote 737676
08-15 11:15:12.788 1588 1602 W ActivityManager: Launch timeout has expired, giving up wake lock!
08-15 11:15:19.930 3100 3123 E chromium: [ERROR:gpu_watchdog_thread.cc(418)] The GPU process hung. Terminating after 10000 ms.
08-15 11:15:19.930 3100 3123 F libc : Fatal signal 11 (SIGSEGV), code 1, fault addr 0x0 in tid 3123 (Watchdog)
08-15 11:15:20.033 3015 3015 W debuggerd: type=1400 audit(0.0:27): avc: denied { search } for name="org.chromium.chrome" dev="dm-0" ino=115234 scontext=u:r:debuggerd:s0 tcon