Tenstorrent

Semiconductors · Artificial Intelligence

Funding

Tenstorrent raises $1.5B Series E at $6.2B valuation

Investors passed up rival takeover talks from Intel and Qualcomm, betting instead that an open RISC-V chip design can crack Nvidia's AI hardware grip.

• Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion in a Series E round led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, valuing the AI chip startup at $6.2 billion post-money.
• The Santa Clara startup designs AI chips and full-stack software on RISC-V, an open, royalty-free architecture that cuts reliance on proprietary ecosystems like Arm's.
• The new capital will scale production of Tenstorrent's Galaxy servers, racks combining dozens of its chips to run chatbots, coding assistants and video generators.
• Earlier this year Tenstorrent held preliminary acquisition talks with Intel and Qualcomm reportedly worth over $5 billion before opting to raise capital and stay independent.
• The round follows a $693 million raise in December 2024 at a roughly $2.6 billion post-money valuation, meaning the company's worth has more than doubled in under two years.
• CEO Jim Keller said a May demonstration of Galaxy servers running DeepSeek's high-performance AI models helped convert investor interest into committed capital.
• The jump underscores investor appetite for credible alternatives to Nvidia's AI chip dominance, even as Tenstorrent walked away from a multibillion-dollar buyout to bet on independent growth.