Tenstorrent raises $1.5B at a $6.2B valuation to expand open-weight AI chips
AI chip startup Tenstorrent has completed a $1.5 billion funding round at a valuation of $6.2 billion, more than double its $2.6 billion valuation at the end of 2024. The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with participation from Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price. CEO Jim Keller said the company decided to remain independent and continue raising funds after demonstrating that its Galaxy servers can run DeepSeek models, and that the new capital will be used to expand chips for open-weight model inference and video generation.
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Beyond the doubled funding size and valuation, the article also explains the background of the company's choice to remain independent and where the funds will go: chips for open-weight model inference.
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Tenstorrent, a chip startup focused on inference, 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 interest from Intel and Qualcomm at valuations of as much as $5 billion.
The fresh round, which more than doubled Tenstorrent’s valuation from the $2.6 billion it fetched in late 2024, was led by Trace Capital, a new firm launched by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, and Innovation X. Other backers included Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price.
Jim Keller, a prominent microprocessor engineer and Tenstorrent CEO, told Bloomberg that the company decided to remain independent and raise more capital after it showed that its Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models. The new capital will go toward scaling chips tailored for serving open-weight AI models and video generation.
Tenstorrent is part of a wave of AI hardware startups trying to chip away at Nvidia’s dominance. Among them is Etched, an AI chip maker that was fielding investment offers at valuations of $40 billion or more, TechCrunch reported earlier this month.