TenTrent, a chip startup led by renowned semiconductor engineer Jim Keller, announced it has raised more than $693 million in Series D funding, giving it a pre-money valuation of $2 billion.
Samsung Securities and AFW Partners led the round. Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, Fidelity Management & Research, and LG Electronics also participated in funding TenTrent, which aims to compete with semiconductor giant Nvidia in developing AI chips. Export Development Canada, Ontario Health Care Pension Plan, Hyundai Motor Group, Baillie Gifford and other investors also participated in the transaction.
Santa Clara, California-based Tenstorrent was founded in 2016 and has since raised more than $1 billion, according to Crunchbase.
Mr. Keller, one of the most highly regarded engineers in the semiconductor industry, joined the company in 2021 as president and chief technology officer and was named CEO in early 2023. He previously worked at Intel, Tesla, and Apple, where he led development. He was the lead architect for the A4 and A5 processors in the iPhone 4, and the K8 microarchitecture at AMD.
Bloomberg reported that Tenstorrent’s latest funding totals $700 million, giving it a post-funding valuation of approximately $2.6 billion.
Tenstorrent said it plans to use the new funding to “build an open source AI software stack, hire developers, expand its global development and design centers, and build systems and clouds for AI developers.” are.
The company is just the latest startup at the intersection of chips and AI to raise significant funding from investors this year. Others include:
In October, Lightmatter, a startup that uses light to link chips together to perform deep learning calculations needed for AI, raised $4.4 billion in a $400 million Series D led by new investor T. Rowe Price. Locked up at a valuation of . Black Semiconductor raised approximately $275 million in July, primarily from the German government. In March, optical interconnection startup Celestial AI raised $175 million in Series C led by Thomas Tull’s National Innovative Technology Fund. Celestial’s photonic fabric platform helps decouple compute and memory, making extensive AI processing faster and more energy efficient. San Francisco-based Etched.ai secured a $120 million round led by Positive Sum and Primary Venture Partners in June. It comes after Israel-based AI chipmaker Hailo secured $120 million of its $136 million Series C expansion funding in April. The new funding round was led by existing and new investors including Gil Agmon, Poalim Equity and others. Recogni, a San Jose, Calif.-based developer of AI inference chips for both generative AI and the automotive industry, raised $102 million in Series C co-led by Celesta Capital and GreatPoint Ventures in February. . Santa Clara, Calif.-based Halo Industries, which develops a laser manufacturing technology platform for the semiconductor industry, raised $80 million in Series B funding led by the National Fund for Innovative Technology in July. Also in July, San Jose, California-based DreamBig Semiconductor raised $75 million in an equity round co-led by Samsung Catalyst Fund and Sehat Sutardja.
In March, AI chip startup Astera Labs became one of the few venture-backed startups to go public this year. The company raised $713 million in an IPO on Nasdaq when the stock price was $36 per share. The company has recently been trading above $100.
— Chris Metinko contributed to this report.
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