AI chip developer Tenstorrent has closed a $1.5 billion Series E financing that values the company at $6.2 billion after the investment, giving it fresh capital to expand its hardware, software and intellectual-property businesses.
The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, according to Tenstorrent’s October 19 announcement. The investor group also included Fidelity Management & Research Company, Valor Equity Partners, Export Development Canada, Hyundai Motor Group, Samsung Securities, LG Electronics, Bezos Expeditions and several other institutions.
Funding backs systems and chip expansion
Tenstorrent said it will use the proceeds to deploy more of its Galaxy AI servers, increase manufacturing capacity and accelerate commercial expansion. The company also plans to continue developing open-weight AI models and expand its portfolio of licensable AI and CPU technology.
The Toronto-founded company designs AI accelerators and builds CPUs based on the open RISC-V instruction set. It sells systems built around its processors while also licensing processor designs to customers that want to integrate Tenstorrent technology into their own chips. That combination places the company across several layers of the AI infrastructure market, from semiconductor intellectual property to complete server systems.
The company describes Galaxy as a scale-up AI system built from its accelerator technology. Expanding server deployments would move Tenstorrent beyond individual chips and design licenses into larger infrastructure contracts, where customers also evaluate networking, power use, software compatibility and operational support. Manufacturing expansion will be equally important because hardware availability can determine whether prospective users progress from evaluation to production.
Reuters reported that the new round more than doubled Tenstorrent’s valuation from its previous financing in December 2024. The company did not disclose revenue, shipment volumes or a timetable for deploying the new capital.
Asia links run through investors and licensees
The financing strengthens Tenstorrent’s ties to several large Asian industrial and technology groups. Hyundai Motor Group participated in the round, while Samsung Securities and LG Electronics joined as investors. Tenstorrent also identifies Samsung and LG as licensees of its technology.
Those relationships build on earlier funding from the region. In 2023, TNGlobal reported that Hyundai Motor Group and Samsung Catalyst Fund co-led a $100 million strategic investment in Tenstorrent. Hyundai said at the time that the investment was intended to support future mobility technologies and strengthen internal semiconductor capabilities.
Tenstorrent’s footprint also includes teams in Tokyo and Bangalore, alongside offices in North America and Europe. The Asian locations give it access to two important pools of semiconductor engineering and enterprise demand as data-center operators and manufacturers assess alternatives for AI computing.
Competition remains intense
The size of the round reflects sustained investor interest in challengers to the dominant suppliers of AI accelerators. Tenstorrent is competing in a capital-intensive market that requires advanced chip design, access to manufacturing capacity, mature software tools and the ability to secure large customers.
Its use of RISC-V is part of its differentiation. The open instruction-set architecture can give customers more flexibility than proprietary CPU designs, but commercial adoption still depends on software support and successful integration with AI workloads. Tenstorrent’s licensing strategy may widen its potential customer base, although it also makes execution dependent on partners’ product schedules.
The company is also emphasizing open-weight AI models, which can be inspected and adapted more readily than closed alternatives. That approach may support customers seeking greater control over deployment, but models, compilers and developer tools must work reliably with the underlying processors for the strategy to translate into demand.
The Series E gives Tenstorrent substantially more resources to pursue that strategy. The key measures for the next phase will be whether it can turn investor and licensing relationships into broader deployments, scale Galaxy production and build a software ecosystem that lowers the cost of adopting its hardware.
Canada’s Tenstorrent raises $100M strategic up-round co-led by Hyundai, Samsung