- Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation, more than double its $2.6 billion mark from late 2024.
- The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price also participating.
- CEO Jim Keller said the company chose to stay independent after turning down acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm at valuations up to $5 billion.
- New capital will scale chips built to serve open-weight AI models and video generation, after Tenstorrent’s Galaxy servers proved they could run DeepSeek models.
What Happened
Chip startup Tenstorrent has raised $1.5 billion in new funding at a $6.2 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported (Oct 19, 2026). The round more than doubles the 10-year-old company’s $2.6 billion valuation from late 2024 and comes five months after it reportedly fielded acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm at valuations as high as $5 billion.
Why It Matters
Tenstorrent is one of several hardware startups trying to chip away at Nvidia’s dominance in AI inference. CEO Jim Keller, a prominent microprocessor engineer, told Bloomberg the company chose to remain independent and raise fresh capital rather than sell, a sign that investors are still willing to back standalone challengers to Nvidia even as consolidation pressure builds in the sector.
Technical Details
The round was led by Trace Capital, a new firm launched by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, alongside Innovation X. Other backers include Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price. Keller said the decision to raise more money followed internal validation that Tenstorrent’s Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek‘s models, giving the company a concrete proof point for its inference-focused chip design.
Who’s Affected
The new capital is earmarked for chips tailored to serving open-weight AI models and video generation workloads, putting Tenstorrent in direct competition with Nvidia for developers and enterprises deploying open models at scale. It also puts pressure on rival AI chip startup Etched, which TechCrunch reported was separately fielding offers at valuations of $40 billion or more.
What’s Next
Tenstorrent has not disclosed a timeline for shipping the new chip generation. The raise adds to a broader wave of AI hardware financing this year, including Broadcom’s $60 billion AI chip financing push and Anthropic’s own move into custom silicon, as more players bet on inference-specific hardware outside Nvidia’s ecosystem.
