Tenstorrent, an inference-focused chip startup, has raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation. The round comes five months after the 10-year-old Nvidia challenger reportedly received acquisition rights from Intel and Qualcomm at a valuation of up to $5 billion.
The new round, which more than doubles Tenstorrent’s valuation from $2.6 billion in late 2024, was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, a new company launched by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi. Other backers include Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price.
Jim Keller, a prominent microprocessor engineer and CEO of Tenstorrent, told Bloomberg that the company decided to remain independent and raise more funding after discovering that its Galaxy servers could run the DeepSeek model. The new capital will go toward scaling chips tailored to provide open-weight AI models and video generation.
Tenstorrent is part of a wave of AI hardware startups looking to chip away at Nvidia’s dominance. TechCrunch reported earlier this month that the companies included AI chip maker Etched, which had made an investment offer valued at more than $40 billion.
