The key facts
- Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation — up from $2.6 billion in late 2024
- The round was led by Ben Mahdavi's Trace Capital and Innovation X
- Jim Keller told Bloomberg that the company decided to remain independent after demonstrating DeepSeek models running on Galaxy servers
A major round for an Nvidia competitor
Tenstorrent, a startup developing chips for AI inference, raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation. TechCrunch reported this on October 19, 2026. The new valuation is more than double the $2.6 billion the company received in late 2024.
Investors in the round
The round was led by Trace Capital — a new firm founded by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi — and Innovation X. Other participants include Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk and T. Rowe Price.
Declining a sale and plans for the capital
Five months ago, the ten-year-old startup reportedly received acquisition offers from Intel and Qualcomm with valuations of up to $5 billion. Tenstorrent CEO Jim Keller, a renowned microprocessor engineer, told Bloomberg that the company decided to remain independent and raise additional capital after its Galaxy servers were able to run DeepSeek models. The new funds will go toward scaling chips aimed at serving open-weight AI models and video generation.
Context: a wave of AI hardware startups
Tenstorrent is part of a wave of AI hardware startups attempting to challenge Nvidia's dominance. Among them is AI chip maker Etched, which, as TechCrunch previously reported, was considering investment offers with valuations of $40 billion and above.
