Tenstorrent, the Santa Clara AI chip company led by CEO Jim Keller, closed a $1.5 billion Series E at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation, the company announced Monday, Oct. 19.
Why it matters: It was the largest U.S. startup funding round of the week of Oct. 17-23, according to Crunchbase, and it more than doubles the valuation Tenstorrent got in December 2024, Reuters reported.
The deal
- Trace Capital and Innovation X led the round.
- Other investors include ARK Invest, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Sandisk, Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Tether Investments, Virtu Financial and XTX Markets, the company said.
- Its previous round, in December 2024, raised more than $693 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation, Reuters reported.
What the money is for
Tenstorrent says it will deploy its Galaxy servers at scale, keep serving open-weight AI models for chat and video generation, and develop the CPU and AI chip designs it licenses to companies such as Samsung and LG.
The company builds its chips on RISC-V, an open chip architecture that companies can use without paying license fees. Keller previously led Tesla's self-driving chip work and held key design roles at Apple and AMD, Reuters noted.
For more Bay Area chip news, see our story on the Oct. 22 chip stock selloff.