- Tenstorrent is positioned as a viable alternative to Nvidia
- Startup plans to increase hiring for engineering positions after new funding
- Interoperability is a key attraction for Tenstorrent
AI chip startup Tenstorrent has raised $700 million in funding as part of an investment round that values the company at $2.6 billion.
The investment, led by AFW Partners and Samsung Securities, also included pledges of funding from LG Electronics, Fidelity and Bezos Expeditions, the venture capital firm launched by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The company says this funding will play a key role in allowing it to expand its workforce, further develop supply chain capabilities, and build AI training servers to showcase its technologies.
Great expansion
Tenstorrent specializes in the development of powerful and cost-effective chips specifically intended for use in the development of artificial intelligence. Notably, the company uses open source technology in its development, allowing it to avoid the expensive high-bandwidth memory (HBM) currently used by Nvidia.
Similarly, it also focuses heavily on interoperability with other vendors and has been a strong proponent of open-standard RISC-V processor architecture.
It's this aspect of the company's operations that makes the Santa Clara-based company an attractive alternative to Nvidia, according to CEO Jim Keller.
“You can't beat Nvidia if you use HBM, because Nvidia buys the most HBM and has a cost advantage. But they will never be able to lower the price with the way HBM incorporates its products and its plugs,” Keller said in a statement.
Companies have been making efforts to look for alternatives to Nvidia in recent years amid its meteoric rise to prominence in the global tech industry, and Tenstorrent is one of those aiming to fill that void.
In March 2024, Toronto-based AI chip startup Taalas raised $50 million in funding, again aiming to challenge the centrality of the GPU in the industry created by Nvidia's dominance.
While Tenstorrent is still a relatively young company, it has already secured around $150 million in contracts and is scaling significantly.
The company's first chips to hit the market were manufactured as part of a deal with GlobalFoundries. The release of Grayskull, Tenstorrent's RISC-V alternative, was designed to be much easier to program and scale.
Future series of chips will be built through an agreement with TSMC and Samsung. This includes the development of a 2nm AI accelerator, but exact details on launch dates have yet to be determined.
In the long term, the company intends to release a new AI processor each year.
Through Agency