TORONTO, Oct. 19, 2026 | Tenstorrent, the AI chip company run by CEO Jim Keller, announced Oct. 19 that it raised $1.5 billion in a Series E round at a $6.2 billion valuation, SiliconANGLE reported. Trace Capital and Innovation X led the round. Bloomberg put the company’s previous valuation at $2.6 billion after its 2024 round, so the new figure is more than double, according to The Next Web.
Other investors include Fidelity Management & Research, T. Rowe Price, ARK Invest, Morgan Stanley and Protagonist. The Next Web also lists Sandisk and Tether Investments, and neither report says which backers are new and which are existing.
What Tenstorrent Sells and What the Money Is For
Tenstorrent’s best-selling product is its Galaxy server, which can be linked into large superclusters for training and running models. The company says Galaxy servers run open-weight models, from large language models to video generation. Its chips use the open RISC-V architecture, and its software stack is open source. Keller has described the company as selling one architecture at every size, from a single card or workstation to full racks. Tenstorrent also licenses chip designs to companies including Samsung and LG.
The new money will go toward ramping up Galaxy server production for global deployment, advancing RISC-V research and expanding its workforce. SiliconANGLE reported two customers: Virtu Financial, which uses Galaxy servers for on-premises AI trading agents, and Equinix, which makes them available to enterprises. The Next Web also lists Virtu Financial as an investor in the round.
Bloomberg reported in May that Tenstorrent held takeover talks with Intel and Qualcomm. Keller told Bloomberg the company chose to raise money instead, citing a May demo of DeepSeek models running on Galaxy servers. Those claims about pricing, demand and performance come from the company and have not been independently verified.
What the Round Means for the AI Chip Market
The numbers are easier to judge with a little arithmetic. The $6.2 billion valuation is about 2.4 times the $2.6 billion mark from 2024. If all $1.5 billion were new money, it would equal about 24% of the post-money valuation, though neither report says how much of the round is new shares and how much is sold by existing holders.
For comparison, we reported this week that Bolt Graphics is seeking about $100 million at a $700 million valuation for a chip that won’t ship until 2028. Tenstorrent’s round is 15 times larger, and its valuation is about 8.9 times higher. The main difference is that Tenstorrent already sells products. For more recent rounds, see our list of top AI startups in 2026.
Holger Mueller of Constellation Research told SiliconANGLE, “Nvidia is not the only option anymore.” The company’s own numbers support only a narrow version of that view. SiliconANGLE did not report Tenstorrent’s revenue, so the valuation cannot be compared with sales, and neither report cites independent benchmarks against Nvidia hardware. The likeliest buyers are organizations running open-weight models who want an alternative, since that is the use Tenstorrent highlights. For the incumbent’s scale, see our Nvidia statistics page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much did Tenstorrent raise?
Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion in a Series E round at a $6.2 billion valuation, announced Oct. 19, with Trace Capital and Innovation X leading. Bloomberg put its previous valuation at $2.6 billion after its 2024 round.
What does Tenstorrent make?
Tenstorrent makes AI chips and servers built on the open RISC-V architecture, and its best-selling product is the Galaxy server. It also licenses chip designs to companies including Samsung and LG, according to The Next Web.