Tenstorrent raises $1.5B Series E at a $6.2B valuation, led by Trace Capital and Innovation X

TLDR

• Tenstorrent closed a $1.5B Series E at a $6.2B post-money valuation, led by Trace Capital and Innovation X.¹²
• The round more than doubles its valuation and follows reported Intel and Qualcomm acquisition interest of up to $5B.²³
• Bloomberg reports Tenstorrent chose independence after a May demo of Galaxy servers running DeepSeek models.⁴

Tenstorrent, the AI computing company led by CEO Jim Keller, announced on 19 October 2026 that it has closed a $1.5 billion Series E at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation.¹ Trace Capital and Innovation X led the round, with participation from "new and existing investors" including ARK Invest, Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Morgan Stanley, Protagonist, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Tether Investments and XTX Markets.¹ The release does not separate new from existing backers. One signal is a quote from George Bousis of Protagonist, who said the firm was "excited to double down in the Series E", which implies Protagonist is an existing investor.¹

Reuters, via CNA, says the valuation more than doubled from December 2024, when Tenstorrent raised more than $693 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation in a round led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners.³ TechCrunch and Bloomberg put the earlier valuation at $2.6 billion.²⁴ TechCrunch reports the new round came five months after Intel and Qualcomm reportedly showed acquisition interest at valuations of as much as $5 billion.² Bloomberg, as summarised by Investing.com, says Keller's company chose independence after a May demonstration that its Galaxy servers could run DeepSeek models. It reports 1,150 employees and says Tenstorrent competes on lower pricing and design customisation, including for buyers whose order volumes fall outside the scope of the market leaders.⁴

Tenstorrent says it will use the money to deploy Galaxy servers at scale, to keep serving open-weight models across large language models and video generation, and to develop the AI and CPU intellectual property it licenses to chip designers.¹ It builds RISC-V-based AI processors and systems, and licenses its TT-Ascalon RISC-V CPU and Tensix AI cores to customers including Samsung and LG.¹ Its existing backers include Bezos Expeditions, Samsung, LG Electronics, Hyundai Motor Group and Fidelity.¹

On the leads: Innovation X was founded in 2016 by Roger Monteforte and describes itself as a late-stage venture firm investing across defence technology, fintech, AI, infrastructure and the space economy, with more than $4.5 billion under management as of 31 December 2025.¹ On 29 July 2026 it announced its participation in Shield AI's $1.5 billion Series G at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation. Shield AI is a San Diego defence-technology company, and Innovation X's own release called the investment continued backing, alongside other existing investors.⁵ Trace Capital was founded in 2026 by Ben Mahdavi, who co-founded Quiet Capital and led its Access strategy.¹ AltStreet, reading SEC filings, reports that Trace's adviser became SEC-registered on 5 October 2026 with about $1.12 billion in regulatory assets, and flags that a Form D amendment shows $1.1 billion sold alongside zero investors, which it calls inconsistent.⁶ The sources reviewed name no other Trace investments.

Why it matters: a $1.5 billion round led by a firm founded this year and a late-stage investor active in defence technology shows that challengers to Nvidia can still raise at scale, and that Tenstorrent chose to raise rather than sell after the reported takeover interest.