Jim Keller's AI chip development company Tenstorrent raises over 100 billion yen

Tenstorrent, an AI chip development company led by Jim Keller, a genius engineer known for his work on various processors at AMD, Apple, Tesla, and Intel, has announced that it has raised $693 million (approximately 104 billion yen) in a Series D funding round.

Tenstorrent closes $693M+ of Series D funding led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners | Tenstorrent

Funding rounds, which startups use to obtain funds from investors to launch their products or expand their business, are divided into six stages, from the very early 'angel' stage to 'Series D,' depending on the company's scale of growth.

Tenstorrent's Series D funding round was led by South Korea's largest securities firm Samsung Securities and venture capital firm AFW Partners. Other investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' investment firm Bezos Expeditions, LG Electronics, a major home appliance and electronics manufacturer, and Hyundai, an automobile manufacturer.

Prior to this round of funding, Tenstorrent was valued at $2 billion, and with this latest round, the company has raised a total of more than $1 billion.

'We are thrilled to have such an array of investors who believe in our vision,' said Keith Wittek, COO of Tenstorrent. 'Our investing group is a good balance of financial and strategic investors, including individuals who believe in our AI agenda. They respect our team, our technology, and our vision.'

CEO Jim Keller also commented, 'We have great investors. Throughout our fundraising process, I was impressed with how interested investors are in our open source approach to software. They understand that the path to winning is to give developers all the tools they need to get their hands on the technology and get them on board.'