Tenstorrent, a chip startup specialising in inference, has secured $1.5 billion in funding at a $6.2 billion valuation. This round occurred five months after the firm reportedly received acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm at values reaching $5 billion. The investment was led by Trace Capital, a new entity founded by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, alongside Innovation X. Existing backers such as Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price also participated. CEO Jim Keller confirmed the company chose to stay independent following demonstrations that its Galaxy servers could effectively run DeepSeek models. The new capital will fund the scaling of chips designed for open-weight AI models and video generation.
This move highlights a strategic shift away from reliance on Nvidia hardware within the open-source community. Tenstorrent aims to provide alternatives for serving models that organisations prefer not to host on closed ecosystems. The funding validates the market demand for hardware that supports specific model weights without proprietary restrictions. This approach allows developers to maintain control over their infrastructure while reducing dependency on a single supplier.
* Valuation more than doubled from $2.6 billion in late 2024
* Galaxy servers demonstrated capability to run DeepSeek models
* Capital targets scaling chips for open-weight AI and video generation
