Tenstorrent closed a $1.5 billion Series E on October 19 at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation, more than doubling its valuation since a December 2024 Series D that raised more than $693 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation1,4.
Trace Capital and Innovation X led the round, with participation from Ark Invest, Fidelity Management Research Company, Morgan Stanley, Sandisk, Cadence Ventures, T Rowe Price, and Tether Investments, among others3.
Where the capital goes
Tenstorrent said it will use the financing to scale volume manufacturing and deployment of its Galaxy AI servers, expand internationally, and continue developing the CPU and AI accelerator intellectual property it licenses to customers building their own silicon. The company sells AI compute across the stack, from individual accelerator cards and developer workstations to racks, superclusters, and custom IP. It targets organizations looking to run open-weight AI models locally or within their own infrastructure.
Led by semiconductor designer Jim Keller, Tenstorrent develops RISC-V processors, AI accelerator chips, and licensable chip IP. With an open-source software stack, developers can run frontier models locally and enterprises can deploy models on-premises.
"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".
Two more rounds on the same day
The same day brought two additional AI funding rounds. Town, a San Francisco enterprise AI startup founded by former Plaid technology chief Jean-Denis Greze and Tony Vincent, raised $108 million in Series B funding at a reported $1 billion valuation. Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures co-led, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Serena Ventures, and Better Tomorrow Ventures.
Dream Labs, a robotics AI startup founded by former Nvidia Corp. robotics researchers including CEO Joel Jang, announced $90 million in seed financing led by B Capital.
ANALYSIS The Tenstorrent round stands out for its scale and the breadth of its investor base, which spans venture firms, public-market asset managers, and strategic semiconductor players. The company's bet on RISC-V and open-source software as an alternative to proprietary AI compute architectures now carries $6.2 billion in investor conviction behind it.