2 hours ago - Business

Tenstorrent raises $1.5 billion for AI compute

Dan Primack

Illustration of an infinite, recursive tunnel of semiconductor chips. — Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios

Tenstorrent, a Santa Clara, California-based inference chipmaker, on Monday announced that it's raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation led by Trace Capital and Innovation X.

Why it matters: The startup was courted earlier this year by Intel and Qualcomm, but is opting to remain independent. At least for now.

It declined to comment on "market speculation."

Other investors include Agostinelli Group, Cadence Ventures, Morgan Stanley, Sandisk, Tether Investments and insiders ARK Invest, Brett Barna, Eclipse, Fidelity, Maverick Silicon, Protagonist, T. Rowe Price, Troluce Capital, Virtu Financial, and XTX Markets.

The bottom line: Tenstorrent began as a chipmaker that's been working to siphon off a smidge of Nvidia's market share — including by licensing its designs to companies that want their own AI chips. It's since expanded into servers, and the new money will be used to scale manufacturing.

Add Axios on Google

Tenstorrent raises $1.5 billion for AI compute

What to read next