Tenstorrent Raises $1.5 Billion at $6.2 Billion Valuation to Scale AI Chip Production and Challenge Nvidia

AI chip startup Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion in a Series E funding round on October 19, 2026, more than doubling its valuation from approximately $2.6 billion to $6.2 billion.

The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with participation from ARK Invest, Fidelity Management and Research, Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, SanDisk, Tether Investments, Cadence Ventures, and Protagonist.

Tenstorrent, based in Santa Clara, plans to use the funds to scale production of its Galaxy server systems, which combine multiple AI chips to support large language models, coding assistants, and video generation. The company also plans to expand its global commercial presence and continue development of its RISC-V-based intellectual property.

CEO Jim Keller, a veteran chip architect previously associated with AMD, Apple, and Tesla, is positioning Tenstorrent as an open-source alternative to Nvidia. By using the RISC-V architecture, Tenstorrent enables customers to design processors without paying the license fees associated with proprietary ecosystems like Arm.

The company licenses its technology, including the TT-Ascalon RISC-V CPU and Tensix AI cores, to firms like Samsung and LG. The decision to raise capital rather than pursue a sale follows reported acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm. Tenstorrent opted for independence, a choice reportedly influenced by the successful demonstration of its Galaxy servers running DeepSeek models.

The funding comes as the AI chip market continues to expand rapidly, with demand for alternatives to Nvidia's dominant ecosystem growing among both enterprise customers and governments seeking to reduce dependence on a single supplier.