# Tenstorrent raises $1.5 billion, after turning down takeover interest

URL: https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/blog/tenstorrent-raises-1-5-billion-after-turning-down-takeover-interest
Published: 2026-10-21
Author: Roman Aglaganov, Full-stack developer
Category: Industry
Region: North America
Tags: chips, open-weights

> Jim Keller’s inference chip company is now valued at $6.2 billion. It plans to scale chips for serving open-weight models and video generation.

![Illustration: a square chip with pins on every side and a grid of grey cores, one core filled red](https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/api/media/file/tenstorrent-1.png)

Tenstorrent, the AI chip company led by veteran chip designer Jim Keller, has raised $1.5 billion at a valuation of $6.2 billion, TechCrunch reported on 19 October. That is more than double the $2.6 billion it was worth in late 2024.

## The round

Trace Capital, a new firm from Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi, and Innovation X led the round, with Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk and T. Rowe Price also investing.

In May, Bloomberg reported that Intel and Qualcomm had shown interest in buying Tenstorrent at valuations of up to $5 billion. Keller told Bloomberg the company chose to stay independent and raise more money after its Galaxy servers showed they could run DeepSeek models.

## What the money is for

Tenstorrent focuses on inference, the work of running models after they are trained, rather than training them. It says it will use the funds to scale chips for serving “open-weight AI models and video generation”.

## Why it matters

Training made Nvidia rich, but inference is where most AI computing will happen as agents run all day. That opens a door for challengers: Etched was reportedly fielding offers at $40 billion or more earlier this month. Tenstorrent’s bet on open-weight models is a bet that companies will run their own models on cheaper hardware, rather than renting the labs’ closed ones.

## Sources

- [TechCrunch: Tenstorrent hits $6.2B valuation to scale open-weight AI chips](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/19/tenstorrent-hits-6-2b-valuation-to-scale-open-weight-ai-chips/)
- [Bloomberg: AI chip startup Tenstorrent draws takeover interest from Intel, Qualcomm](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-18/ai-chip-startup-tenstorrent-draws-takeover-interest-from-intel-qualcomm)