Tenstorrent Raises $1.5B at $6.2B Valuation to Scale Open-Weight AI Chips

Inference chip startup Tenstorrent raised $1.5B in fresh funding at a $6.2B valuation, more than doubling the $2.6B valuation it reached in late 2024. The financing comes five months after the 10-year-old Nvidia $NVDA challenger reportedly drew acquisition interest from Intel $INTC and Qualcomm $QCOM at valuations of up to $5B. CEO Jim Keller told Bloomberg that Tenstorrent chose to remain independent and raise additional capital after demonstrating that its Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models, with the new funds directed toward scaling silicon for open-weight AI models and video generation. Trace Capital—a new firm started by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi—and Innovation X led the round, joined by Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, SanDisk, Cadence Ventures, and Eclipse. The raise arrives alongside broader investor appetite for alternative AI silicon, including fellow chip startup Etched, which TechCrunch reported earlier this month was fielding investment offers at valuations of $40B or more.