Tenstorrent Raises $1.5B Series E at $6.2B Valuation to Scale AI Compute

Tenstorrent has closed $1.5 billion in Series E funding at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation, the company announced on October 19, 2026. Trace Capital and Innovation X led the round, which the AI computing company said will fund volume manufacturing and global commercial expansion.

Other participating investors, a mix of new and existing backers, include 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.

Tenstorrent framed the raise around what it described as a move by chip designers, sovereign players, and inference platforms to own their AI compute.

Use of Proceeds and Product Stack

According to the announcement, Tenstorrent will use the capital to deploy its Galaxy servers at scale, continue serving open-weight models across large language models and video generation, and advance the AI and CPU intellectual property it licenses to customers designing their own silicon.

The company sells AI compute at every level of the stack, from a single card or workstation to racks, superclusters, and custom IP. Tenstorrent said its open-source software stack lets developers run frontier models locally and lets enterprises deploy models on their own premises, and it describes the latency and throughput of those deployments as industry-leading.

Executive and Investor Statements

“We built one architecture and sell it at every size,” chief executive Jim Keller said in the announcement. “The future of compute is open, scalable, and owned by the people building on it.” Keller added that the company’s investors believe in that model and said he appreciated their support.

Ben Mahdavi, founder at Trace Capital, said Keller and his team bring decades of hands-on silicon, software, and IP experience, adding that Trace Capital is excited to partner with Tenstorrent as Galaxy continues to scale.

George Bousis, co-founder and managing partner at Protagonist, said few companies design both the chip and the software that runs on it, and he said Tenstorrent’s video generation results beat industry benchmarks ahead of his firm’s expectations. Bousis said Protagonist is doubling down in the Series E to back Keller and the team through the company’s next phase of growth.

Company Background and Prior Funding

Tenstorrent builds RISC-V-based AI processors and systems for developers, enterprises, and sovereign infrastructure. In addition to servers and workstations, the company licenses its TT-Ascalon RISC-V CPU and Tensix AI cores to chip designers including Samsung and LG. The announcement identifies Keller as the architect of the Apple A4/A5, AMD Zen, and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving chip. Tenstorrent counts Bezos Expeditions, Samsung, LG Electronics, Hyundai Motor Group, and Fidelity Management & Research Company among its backers and operates from Santa Clara, Austin, Toronto, Belgrade, Tokyo, and Bangalore.

Trace Capital was founded in 2026 by Mahdavi, who previously co-founded Quiet Capital and led its Access strategy. Innovation X, the round’s other lead investor, was founded in 2016 by Roger Monteforte as a late-stage venture capital firm investing in privately held companies across defense technology, fintech, artificial intelligence, infrastructure, and the space economy. Innovation X Advisors reported more than $4.5 billion under management across multiple funds on Form ADV as of December 31, 2025, according to the announcement.

The Series E follows Tenstorrent’s Series D, which Tenstorrent announced on December 2, 2024, disclosing that it had closed more than $693 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation. Samsung Securities and AFW Partners led that round, which the company said was oversubscribed amid strong investor demand. Participants included XTX Markets, Corner Capital, Protagonist, MESH, Export Development Canada, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, LG Technology Ventures, Hyundai Motor Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Innovation Engine, Baillie Gifford, and Bezos Expeditions.

Chief operating officer Keith Witek said in the December 2024 announcement that the investor group balanced financial and strategic investors, and that those investors saw roughly $150 million in closed deals as a strong signal of commercial traction and market opportunity. Tenstorrent said the Series D proceeds would go toward open-source AI software stacks, developer hiring, expanded global development and design centers, and systems and clouds for AI developers. Barclays acted as sole placement agent for the December 2024 round.