Future TechnologyQualcomm wants to buy Tenstorrent for up to $10 billion to take on Nvidia
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Key takeaways
- Qualcomm is in early talks to buy AI chip startup Tenstorrent for $8 to $10 billion
- Tenstorrent is run by Jim Keller, the chip designer behind work at Apple, Tesla and AMD
- Its chips use RISC-V, an open architecture customers can license and modify freely
- Nvidia holds over 80% of the AI training hardware market. This is the most credible challenge yet
Qualcomm is in early talks to buy Tenstorrent for somewhere between $8 billion and $10 billion, according to reports on June 16. Both companies have declined to comment, so treat the exact number as a moving target. The intent is the part that matters.
Tenstorrent was founded in 2016 and is led by Jim Keller, one of the most respected chip designers alive. He has shipped silicon at Apple, Tesla and AMD. When he picks a side in a hardware fight, people pay attention.
Why RISC-V is the whole point
Tenstorrent builds its AI processors on RISC-V, an open instruction set anyone can license and customise. Nvidia's stack is closed. That difference is the entire pitch. Hyperscalers like Amazon and Google are already designing their own chips to escape Nvidia pricing, and an open architecture gives them room to do exactly that.
Tenstorrent raised $693 million in a Series D in December 2024 at a $2.6 billion valuation. A $10 billion offer is roughly a 4x premium on that, eighteen months later. Qualcomm clearly thinks the AI chip race is far from settled.
What it would mean
Nvidia holds more than 80% of the market for AI training hardware. Nobody has dented that with marketing decks. You dent it with a real architecture, real engineers and a company big enough to ship at scale. Qualcomm buying Keller's team would tick all three boxes for the first time.
It is early talks, not a signed deal, and these things fall apart. But if it closes, the AI chip market stops being a one-horse race overnight.