Tenstorrent raises $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation

Tenstorrent, a chip startup focused on inference, has raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation. TechCrunch reported the funding, with Marina Temkin as author.

The round comes five months after the 10-year-old company reportedly received acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm at valuations of up to $5 billion. The new funding more than doubled Tenstorrent’s valuation from the $2.6 billion it reached in late 2024.

Trace Capital, a new firm launched by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, and Innovation X led the round. Other backers included Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price.

Tenstorrent CEO Jim Keller told Bloomberg that the company chose to remain independent and raise more capital after demonstrating that its Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models. The company plans to use the new capital to scale chips designed to serve open-weight AI models and generate video.

Tenstorrent is among a group of AI hardware startups seeking to challenge Nvidia’s dominance. TechCrunch reported earlier this month that AI chipmaker Etched was fielding investment offers at valuations of $40 billion or more.