AI chip startup Tenstorrent raises $1.5bn at $6.2bn valuation
AI chip startup Tenstorrent has secured $1.5 billion in a Series E round, more than doubling its previous valuation to $6.2 billion.
The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with participation from major investors including ARK Invest, Cadence Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Maverick Silicon, Morgan Stanley, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price. Tenstorrent plans to use the funding to scale manufacturing and introduce new generations of its Galaxy servers while expanding its global workforce.
Advanced Technology
The company's Galaxy servers, which began shipping in April 2026, feature 32 of Tenstorrent's RISC-V Blackhole processors with Tensix AI cores, delivering 23 petaflops of FP8 compute performance. Founded in 2016, Tenstorrent builds scalable AI accelerators for both cloud and Edge computing to compete with Nvidia's GPUs.
Company Evolution
In October 2022, Tenstorrent founder Ljubisa Bajic swapped positions with CEO Jim Keller, who was then serving as CTO. The company previously raised $693 million in a Series D round in December 2024, valuing it at over $2.6 billion with investors including Jeff Bezos' Bezos Expeditions and Samsung Securities.
In June 2026, reports emerged that Qualcomm was exploring an acquisition of the chip startup, though no deal materialized. Tenstorrent is also developing a RISC-V CPU and licenses its designs to other organizations.
Related
