What happened
Tenstorrent, a 10-year-old Nvidia challenger focused on inference, raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation — more than double the $2.6 billion it fetched in late 2024.
Why it matters
The round lets the startup stay independent five months after reportedly drawing acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm at valuations of as much as $5 billion, and it plans to use the capital to scale chips tailored for open-weight AI models and video generation.
WHO IT HITSThe funding lands on AI hardware procurement teams and cloud operators evaluating non-Nvidia inference chips for serving open-weight models and video generation, and on investors tracking Nvidia challengers.
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Tenstorrent's decision to raise rather than sell caps a year in which the 10-year-old chip startup reportedly drew acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm at valuations of as much as $5 billion. The new round values it at $6.2 billion, above those reported offers, and more than doubles the $2.6 billion it fetched in late 2024.
The capital is earmarked for scaling chips tailored for serving open-weight AI models and video generation. That focus follows the company's demonstration that its Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models, which CEO Jim Keller cited to Bloomberg as the reason Tenstorrent chose to remain independent.
The round was led by Trace Capital, a new firm launched by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, and Innovation X, with Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price among other backers. Tenstorrent sits in a wave of AI hardware startups trying to chip away at Nvidia's dominance; among them, Etched was fielding investment offers at valuations of $40 billion or more, TechCrunch reported earlier this month.
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