Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation, TechCrunch's Marina Temkin reported on October 19. That is more than double the $2.6 billion valuation it received in late 2024. Trace Capital, a new firm launched by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, and Innovation X led the round, with Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk and T. Rowe Price also participating.
What it builds
TechCrunch describes Tenstorrent as an inference-focused chip company about ten years old and calls it an Nvidia challenger. The new funds will go toward chips for open-weight AI models and video generation. The page does not describe specific chip specifications or name customers. Jim Keller, a prominent microprocessor engineer, is CEO.
The independence decision
Five months before this round, the company reportedly drew acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm at valuations of as much as $5 billion, according to Bloomberg. Per Bloomberg, Keller said the company chose to stay independent and raise more capital after its Galaxy servers showed they could run DeepSeek models. TechCrunch relays this secondhand and the article contains no verbatim quotes from Keller.
Wider chip funding
The article notes that TechCrunch reported earlier in October that Etched, another AI chip maker, was fielding funding offers at a valuation of $40 billion or more. Taken together, the reports show investors continuing to back challengers to Nvidia at much higher valuations than a year ago.
Source: TechCrunch. This is an AI Business Watch summary of the original report.