Tenstorrent raises US$1.5B at a US$6.2B valuation

Tenstorrent, the AI chip company founded in Toronto in 2016, said Oct. 19 it has raised US$1.5 billion (about $2.1 billion) in a Series E round at a US$6.2 billion valuation (about $8.8 billion), according to BetaKit.

Trace Capital and Innovation X led the round, according to the company’s announcement on its website and a funding roundup from Tech Startups. Both are described as new U.S. investors. Tech Startups listed ARK Invest, Fidelity Management & Research, Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, SanDisk, Cadence Ventures, Tether Investments and XTX Markets among other participants.

The valuation is more than double the US$2.6 billion set in the company’s late-2024 Series D round, which raised nearly US$700 million, BetaKit reported. The company did not say whether the new round includes secondary share sales or disclose its total funding to date.

Tenstorrent said it will spend the money on volume manufacturing of its Galaxy servers, which have begun commercial shipments, as well as next-generation hardware and intellectual property development and hiring, BetaKit reported.

CEO Jim Keller said the company’s strategy rests on a single architecture sold at every size. “We built one architecture and sell it at every size,” Keller said, according to BetaKit.

Tenstorrent sells AI computing hardware ranging from single cards to superclusters. It also licenses AI and RISC-V chip designs to customers that include LG and Samsung, and its open-source software stack is a key selling point, BetaKit reported.

The Canadian connection remains substantial even though the company moved its headquarters from Toronto to Santa Clara, Calif., in 2023. Toronto is still its largest office, with about 200 of its roughly 1,000 employees, and some parts are made at a Vexos Canada site in Markham, Ont., according to BetaKit.

Existing Canadian backers include Export Development Canada, Georgian, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan and Real Ventures. BetaKit reported that unnamed Canadian investors also took part in the new round.

The raise lands as Canada tries to keep AI companies and their capital at home. Radical Ventures recently set out a $1-billion fund aimed at AI brain drain, and this week Anthropic signed a lease for a $10-billion Cape Breton data centre plan. Tenstorrent’s path, founded in Canada, funded by Canadian investors and now headquartered in California, shows how much of the value from homegrown chip and AI firms can accrue elsewhere.

Reports from The Information and Bloomberg said Intel and Qualcomm had expressed takeover interest in Tenstorrent. Keller said he had met both CEOs to pitch the company’s hardware IP but that an initial public offering remained the target, BetaKit reported. A Tenstorrent spokesperson declined to comment on those reports or on IPO plans.

Last year, the company acquired Blue Cheetah Analog Design and cut 7.5 per cent of its workforce while shifting from enterprise to developer sales, BetaKit reported.

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Sources: BetaKit (Oct. 19, 2026); Tech Startups (Oct. 19, 2026).