Tenstorrent raises $1.5B at a $6.2B valuation to build chips for serving open-weight models
Jim Keller's inference chip company more than doubled its valuation from late 2024, after reportedly drawing acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm.
TechCrunch reported on October 19 that Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation, up from $2.6 billion in late 2024. Trace Capital, a new firm from Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, and Innovation X led the round. Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk and T. Rowe Price also took part.
The round comes five months after Intel and Qualcomm reportedly showed acquisition interest at valuations as high as $5 billion, per TechCrunch. CEO Jim Keller told Bloomberg the company chose to stay independent and raise more money after showing its Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models. The money goes toward chips built for serving open-weight models and for video generation.
Tenstorrent is one of several startups going after Nvidia's lead in AI hardware. TechCrunch says Etched was fielding investment offers at valuations of $40 billion or more earlier this month.
Why it matters for builders
More hardware built for serving open-weight models should mean more competition, and maybe lower prices, at the hosts you rent those models from. You won't buy a Galaxy server, but your inference provider might.
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