RISC-V-based AI chips and licensed IP — the open alternative to NVIDIA and Arm
HQ: Santa Clara, CA, United States | Founded: 2016 | Employees: ~500-1,000 (est.) | Stage: Late Stage VC (~$2.6-3.2B valuation, 2025-2026) | Website: https://www.tenstorrent.com
Tenstorrent was founded in 2016 by Ljubisa Bajic, Milos Trajkovic, and Ivan Hamer — ex-NVIDIA/AMD/Intel silicon veterans — with a thesis that AI compute needed a new architecture: scalable, open, and built around dataflow rather than GPU generalities. After early hardware iterations (Grayskull, Wormhole), the company hired Jim Keller — the most celebrated CPU architect alive (DEC Alpha, AMD K8, Apple A4/A5, AMD Zen, Tesla FSD) — as CTO in 2021, then CEO in 2023.
Under Keller, Tenstorrent sharpened into a two-sided business that no other AI chip startup runs: first, AI accelerators and systems (Wormhole, Blackhole, and the coming Flute/Quasar) built on its Tensix cores paired with open RISC-V CPUs (Ascalon); second, and distinctively, IP licensing — selling its RISC-V CPU designs and AI accelerator IP to other silicon makers, much like Arm sells designs. The licensing model monetizes R&D across the industry and seeds the RISC-V ecosystem Tenstorrent needs to displace Arm's datacenter incumbency.
Funding reflects the ambition: a $693M Series D closed December 2024 at a ~$2.6B post-money valuation, led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners, with Bezos Expeditions, LG, Fidelity and others — bringing total raised past $1.2B. In November 2025, reports described talks for $800M at a $3.2B pre-money valuation led by Fidelity Management, and by mid-2026, The Next Web and others reported Intel and Qualcomm circling the company in a potential ~$10B takeover — the ultimate validation (or exit) for the open-silicon thesis.
Tenstorrent is the anti-NVIDIA bet: open RISC-V instruction sets instead of CUDA's walled garden, IP licensing instead of pure chip sales, and Jim Keller — the architect behind Apple's A-series, AMD's Zen, and Tesla's FSD chip — as the credibility anchor. It closed a $693M Series D at ~$2.6B (Dec 2024), was reportedly in talks for $800M at $3.2B+ pre-money (Fidelity-led, Nov 2025), and drew reported takeover interest from Intel and Qualcomm (~$10B) in 2026. The bull case: RISC-V is the only credible open path past Arm/NVIDIA control points, and licensing scales like software. The bear case: it is fighting NVIDIA's ecosystem and Arm's incumbency simultaneously, on revenue that remains small relative to rivals, and takeover talks may signal limited standalone optionality.
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