October 20, 2026
Tenstorrent Raises $1.5 Billion to Take On Nvidia — Valuation Rockets to $6.2 Billion
AI chip startup Tenstorrent has raised $1.5 billion in a Series E round that values the company at $6.2 billion — more than double its valuation from December 2024. The Santa Clara company, led by legendary chip architect Jim Keller (Apple, AMD, Tesla), will use the money to scale production of its Galaxy servers, which bundle dozens of its chips to run chatbots, coding assistants, and video generators.
Tenstorrent’s bet is openness: its chips are built on RISC-V, the open-source architecture that avoids Arm’s license fees and proprietary ecosystems. The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, and SanDisk among the backers. Just months ago, Intel and Qualcomm reportedly circled with acquisition interest up to $5 billion — Keller chose to stay independent and raise instead.