Tenstorrent said it raised $1.5 billion in a Series E that now values the company at $6.2 billion, more than double its $2.6 billion mark from 2024. Trace Capital headed the financing; its founder Ben Mahdavi, a Quiet Capital cofounder, launched the firm earlier this year, and Innovation X joined as well. The company said the details align with an earlier Bloomberg News report.
Tenstorrent had also discussed a possible takeover with Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. earlier this year while it was lining up the financing, according to prior Bloomberg reporting.
"Jim and his team bring decades of hands-on silicon, software, and IP experience, and we're excited to partner with Tenstorrent as Galaxy continues to scale," Mahdavi said. Tenstorrent markets its products under the Galaxy brand.
Participants in the round included Agostinelli Group, Sandisk Corp., and Tether Investments, along with T. Rowe Price Group Inc. Also in the mix was Cadence Ventures, which serves as Cadence Design Systems Inc.'s corporate venture arm. Prior backers, including Ark Invest and Fidelity, took part as well.
Tenstorrent designs chips it says are more efficient for certain AI workloads, and the company sells more than standalone parts by offering computers and software, too. The business was founded in 2016 by AMD alumni Ljubisa Bajic, Milos Trajkovic, and Ivan Hamer; Bajic previously worked with CEO Jim Keller at AMD.
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Keller said the company chose to raise capital rather than sell. He pointed to a May demonstration in which Galaxy servers ran high-performance AI models from DeepSeek as a turning point, adding, "Once we had the ability to fundraise and demonstrate the performance and started to ship, the investor interest came in."
Keller, a leading figure among chip engineers with stints at AMD, Apple Inc., Intel Corp., and Tesla Inc., said customers want versatile AI machines capable of running any type of model and that Tenstorrent can compete by offering lower prices. Nvidia Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and Broadcom Inc. lead the market for semiconductors that power the training and inference of AI software, though startups are pushing in.
He said Tenstorrent's customer base is broad, the company can customize software or hardware, and it can take on orders that larger rivals may consider too small. The company has 1,150 employees.
The new capital equips Tenstorrent to chase share in AI infrastructure, a market seeing hundreds of billions in spending.
For portfolios, the signal is twofold: demand for flexible, general-purpose AI compute is strong, and investors are funding challengers that promise performance with lower pricing and customization. The bottom line: buyers want options beyond the largest incumbents, and Tenstorrent is positioning to be one of them.
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