Jim Keller's Tenstorrent raises $1.5 billion, and its valuation more than doubles to $6.2 billion

Tenstorrent, the AI chip company run by veteran chip architect Jim Keller, said on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, that it closed a $1.5 billion Series E at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation, led by Trace Capital and Innovation X.

Nvidia sells the most expensive ticket in AI. Tenstorrent's bet is the opposite pitch: an open instruction set, open-source software, and chips you can buy as one card, a rack, or a design you license and build yourself. $1.5 billion says a lot of money now thinks "own your compute" is a real market — sovereign buyers and chip designers who don't want to rent their future from one supplier. The round is investor-heavy on the names and light on numbers: no revenue, no named Galaxy customers. The thing to watch is whether those servers show up in volume, because that's what the money is for.

Tenstorrent said on Oct. 19, 2026 that it has closed $1.5 billion in Series E funding at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation. Post-money means the company's value after the new cash is counted in. The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with participation from new and existing investors including Agostinelli Group, ARK Invest, Brett Barna, Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Maverick Silicon, Morgan Stanley, Protagonist, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Tether Investments, Troluce Capital, Virtu Financial and XTX Markets. Those terms are Tenstorrent's.

Tenstorrent says it will use the money to deploy Galaxy servers at scale, keep serving open-weight models across large language models and video generation, and advance the AI and CPU designs it licenses to customers building their own silicon. Open-weight models are ones whose files anyone can download and run. The announcement frames the round as funding "volume manufacturing and global commercial expansion as chip designers, sovereign players, and inference platforms move to own their AI compute." Inference is the work of running a finished model so it can answer you. Those lines are Tenstorrent's.

Reuters reports that the Galaxy servers combine dozens of Tenstorrent's AI chips to power chatbots, coding assistants and video generators. Tenstorrent builds its chips on RISC-V, an open-source chip architecture that lets companies design processors without paying a license fee for the instruction set. Those lines are Reuters'.

Tenstorrent sells compute at every size, from a single card or workstation to racks, superclusters and custom chip designs, with an open-source software stack. It licenses its TT-Ascalon RISC-V CPU and Tensix AI cores — the building blocks other companies can put into their own chips — to chip designers including Samsung and LG. Those lines are Tenstorrent's.

Chief executive Jim Keller said: "We built one architecture and sell it at every size. The future of compute is open, scalable, and owned by the people building on it." Keller previously worked on Apple's A4 and A5 chips, AMD's Zen processors and Tesla's Full Self-Driving chip. The quotation is his, as Tenstorrent prints it.

George Bousis of Protagonist, an investor in the round, said Tenstorrent's "video generation results beat industry benchmarks ahead of our expectations." That is an investor's claim, not an independent benchmark result.

Reuters reports that Tenstorrent's previous round, in December 2024, raised more than $693 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation, led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners. Pre-money is the value before that round's cash is counted. Reuters says the new $6.2 billion valuation more than doubles the December 2024 mark. Those figures are Reuters'.

Existing backers named by Tenstorrent include Bezos Expeditions, Samsung, LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor Group. The company says it operates from Santa Clara, Austin, Toronto, Belgrade, Tokyo and Bangalore. The announcement does not give revenue, name Galaxy customers, or describe a public listing.

The picture is a Tenstorrent Galaxy server with its patterned metal faceplate and Tenstorrent logo, the AI system the company says its new funding will scale. It is the company's official product photograph from the Series E announcement.

In plain terms, Tenstorrent said on Monday that it raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation, led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, to manufacture Galaxy servers in volume and license more of its chip designs. Reuters says the new price more than doubles the December 2024 mark. Keller's pitch is one architecture, sold as a card, a rack, or a design you build yourself. The round names a long list of investors and no Galaxy customers.