Tenstorrent has secured $1.5 billion in fresh funding at a $6.2 billion valuation, more than doubling its price tag from a $2.6 billion round closed late last year. The financing arrives roughly five months after Intel and Qualcomm were said to be circling the company with takeover bids that topped out around $5 billion.
Trace Capital leads the round
Trace Capital, a new vehicle started by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, led the investment alongside Innovation X. The syndicate also includes Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk and T. Rowe Price. The participation of SanDisk and Cadence adds strategic weight to a cap table already heavy with financial backers.
Keller bets on independence
Chief executive Jim Keller told Bloomberg the board opted to stay independent after internal testing showed the company’s Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models. The proceeds are earmarked for scaling silicon tailored to serving open-weight models and video generation workloads. Keller, a veteran microprocessor architect, is effectively wagering that the inference market can support a viable alternative to the incumbent ecosystem.
The inference bet
Tenstorrent is one of several startups attempting to undercut Nvidia’s grip on AI compute by focusing on inference rather than training. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that rival Etched was fielding offers at valuations of $40 billion or more, a figure that suggests private markets are pricing a wide dispersion of outcomes for the sector. Whether Tenstorrent’s open-weight focus translates into durable revenue or simply a higher markup for a future sale remains the open question.