Jim Keller’s Tenstorrent raises $1.5B at $6.2B to challenge Nvidia

Artificial intelligence hardware startup Tenstorrent has secured $1.5 billion in a Series E funding round, lifting its valuation to $6.2 billion. The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with additional investors including Protagonist, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, ARK Invest, and T. Rowe Price, according to reporting by SiliconANGLE.

The capital will be used to expand production of Tenstorrent’s Galaxy servers, advance innovation in the RISC-V ecosystem, and grow its global team. The company is positioning its offerings as an alternative to dominant GPU-based solutions, combining custom silicon with a proprietary software stack to support AI workloads.

Tenstorrent was founded by Jim Keller, a semiconductor industry veteran known for his work on chip designs at major technology companies. The hardware is designed to scale across different deployment sizes while optimizing energy efficiency, a key consideration for cost-sensitive AI applications.

The company’s software stack includes TT-Forge, a compiler that integrates with machine learning frameworks; TT-Metalium, a development kit for hardware optimization; and TT-LLK, for low-level kernel tuning. Together, these tools allow developers to compile, optimize, and run AI models on Tenstorrent’s silicon. Keller has described the architecture as uniform across product lines, simplifying deployment for enterprises.

Tenstorrent’s Galaxy servers have been adopted by some financial services firms for on-premises AI applications and are also offered through data center providers. The TT-QuietBox, a liquid-cooled desktop workstation, targets developers needing high-performance local compute for testing and running advanced models. For larger workloads, multiple Blackhole cards and QuietBoxes can be networked to combine resources.

Investors appear to view Tenstorrent’s approach as distinctive, with some noting that few competitors offer both custom chips and the accompanying software. Analyst Holger Mueller suggested that the funding could help diversify the AI compute market, potentially making such workloads more affordable and adaptable for enterprises.

The round also underscores the growing interest in RISC-V, an open-standard instruction set gaining traction as an alternative to proprietary architectures. Tenstorrent plans to allocate part of the funding toward advancing RISC-V innovation, which may further accelerate its adoption in AI and high-performance computing.

While Tenstorrent’s valuation reflects strong investor confidence, it remains to be seen whether its full-stack approach and RISC-V-based solutions can gain significant traction in a market currently dominated by established players. The next phase of production and deployment will test the company’s ability to convert its technology and funding into broader adoption.

Sources: siliconangle.com