Tenstorrent closes $1.5B Series E at a $6.2B valuation
Tenstorrent, the AI computing company led by CEO Jim Keller, has closed $1.5B in Series E funding at a $6.2B post-money valuation. The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X and will fund Galaxy server deployment at scale and the company's chip IP licensing business.
- Tenstorrent closed a $1.5B Series E at a $6.2B post-money valuation.
- The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with investors including Fidelity, ARK Invest and Morgan Stanley.
- Funds will go to deploying Galaxy servers at scale and advancing licensed AI and CPU IP.
- Tenstorrent licenses its TT-Ascalon RISC-V CPU and Tensix AI cores to chip designers including Samsung and LG.
Who is backing the round
According to Tenstorrent, the round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X. New and existing investors also took part, including Agostinelli Group, ARK Invest, Brett Barna, Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Maverick Silicon, Morgan Stanley, Protagonist, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Tether Investments, Troluce Capital, Virtu Financial and XTX Markets. The T. Rowe Price participation is through accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.
Trace Capital was founded in 2026 by Ben Mahdavi, who previously co-founded Quiet Capital and led its Access strategy. Innovation X was founded in 2016 by Roger Monteforte and is a late-stage venture firm. According to the release, Innovation X Advisors has over $4.5B under management across multiple funds, as reported on Form ADV as of 12/31/2025.
What the money is for
Tenstorrent says it will use the capital to deploy Galaxy servers at scale. These servers continue to serve open-weight models across LLMs and video generation. The company will also advance the AI and CPU IP it licenses to customers who design their own silicon.
The company describes its business as selling AI compute at every level of the stack: from a single card or workstation to racks, superclusters and custom IP. It also points to an open-source software stack, which it says lets developers run frontier models locally and lets enterprises deploy models on-prem at industry-leading latency and throughput. These are the company's own claims.
"We built one architecture and sell it at every size," said Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent. "The future of compute is open, scalable, and owned by the people building on it."
Company profile and investor comments
Tenstorrent builds RISC-V-based AI processors and systems for developers, enterprises and sovereign infrastructure worldwide. Keller is described in the release as the architect of Apple A4/A5, AMD Zen and Tesla's Full Self-Driving chip. Beyond servers and workstations, Tenstorrent licenses its TT-Ascalon RISC-V CPU and Tensix AI cores to chip designers including Samsung and LG.
The company lists Bezos Expeditions, Samsung, LG Electronics, Hyundai Motor Group and Fidelity Management and Research Company among its backers. It operates from Santa Clara, Austin, Toronto, Belgrade, Tokyo and Bangalore.
George Bousis, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Protagonist, said: "Few companies design the chip and the software that runs on it. Tenstorrent does both, and its video generation results beat industry benchmarks ahead of our expectations." Ben Mahdavi of Trace Capital cited the team's "decades of hands-on silicon, software, and IP experience" as Galaxy continues to scale.
What it means
The release frames the raise around a shift in which chip designers, sovereign players and inference platforms want to own their AI compute. Tenstorrent positions its combination of hardware, software and licensable IP as a way to serve those groups. The funding is aimed at volume manufacturing and global commercial expansion, according to the company. The release gives no details on production volumes, timelines or pricing.
ACN Newswire: Artificial Intelligence: Tenstorrent Announces a $1.5B Series E at a $6.2B Valuation
