Inference-focused chip startup Tenstorrent has raised $1.5 billion at a valuation of $6.2 billion. This financing comes just five months after the company, which has a history of 10 years and is considered a competitor to NVIDIA, reportedly received acquisition interest from Intel and Qualcomm, with its valuation once reaching as high as $5 billion at that time.

This round of new financing has more than doubled the valuation of Tenstorrent from the $2.6 billion valuation it obtained at the end of 2024. The lead investors include Trace Capital – a company newly established by Quiet Capital co-founder Ben Mahdavi – as well as Innovation X. Other investors also include Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk, and T. Rowe Price.

Tenstorrent, the Chief Executive Officer and a renowned microprocessor engineer, Jim Keller told Bloomberg that after demonstrating that their Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models, the company decided to remain independent and raise more funds. The new funds will be used to expand the scale of chips for open-source AI models and video generation.

Tenstorrent is one of a group of AI hardware startups that attempt to erode NVIDIA's dominant position. TechCrunch reported earlier this month that among them is AI, a chip manufacturer, which received investment offers valued at $40 billion or more.