Amazon founder Jeff Bezos participated in a funding round for AI chip startup Tenstorrent.
Alongside Samsung Securities and AFW Partners, the billionaire's Bezos Expeditions participated in the $693 million Series D funding round that valued the startup at more than $2.6 billion.
In a statement, the company said it will use the funding to build out open-source AI software stacks, hire developers, expand its global development and design centers, and build systems and clouds for AI developers.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Tenstorrent CEO Jim Keller said the company has already signed customer contracts worth almost $150m and is planning to release a new AI processor every two years.
“We are excited by the breadth of investors that believe in our vision,” said Keith Witek, Tenstorrent’s COO.
“If you look at this group, you see a balance of financial investors and strategic investors, as well as some notable individuals that have conviction in our plans for AI. They respect our team, our technology, and our vision. They see the ~$150m in deals closed as a strong signal of commercial traction and opportunity in the market.”
Founded in 2016, Tenstorrent builds scalable artificial intelligence accelerators for both the cloud and Edge in order to compete with Nvidia’s GPUs. The company is also developing a RISC-V CPU and licenses its designs to other organizations.
In October 2022, Tenstorrent founder Ljubisa Bajic job-swapped with the company’s CTO, Jim Keller, before stepping down from the company entirely in March of the following year to found Taalas, a separate AI chip startup.
