Artificial intelligence chip startup Tenstorrent has secured $1.5 billion in a late-stage funding round, pushing its post-money valuation to $6.2 billion. The announcement, made on Monday, marks a dramatic increase for the Santa Clara, California-based company, more than doubling the valuation it achieved less than two years prior.
Tenstorrent plans to deploy the newly acquired capital to scale manufacturing operations for its Galaxy servers. These high-capacity systems integrate dozens of the company’s proprietary AI processors to power demanding applications, including advanced chatbots, automated coding assistants, and complex video generators.
The startup specializes in developing both hardware and software utilizing RISC-V, an open-source instruction set architecture. This framework allows technology firms to design custom processors without incurring expensive license fees, offering a strategic alternative that reduces reliance on established proprietary chip ecosystems such as Arm.
The Series E financing round was co-led by Trace Capital and Innovation X. A broad consortium of institutional and corporate investors also participated, including Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, SanDisk, Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, and Tether Investments.
Tenstorrent is led by Chief Executive Officer Jim Keller, a veteran semiconductor engineer and prominent chip architect. Prior to joining the startup, Keller held key leadership and design roles at major technology corporations, including leading Tesla’s internal development efforts for autonomous driving silicon, alongside foundational engineering work at Apple and AMD.
The latest capital injection follows a significant growth phase for the firm. In December 2024, Tenstorrent closed a funding round that raised more than $693 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation, a financing effort that was co-led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners.
