Skip to content
News & Analysis

What Drove Investors to Fund (or Decline) Tenstorrent

During Tenstorrent’s 18-month fundraising marathon, the startup made pitches to hundreds of companies. What did they learn?
What Drove Investors to Fund (or Decline) Tenstorrent
(Image: iStock)

Share This Post:

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Startups live or die by the amounts they raise. This rule applies even to Tenstorrent, a hot AI company with Jim Keller, a legendary CPU designer, at its helm. Although Keller personally calling Amazon chief Jeff Bezos helped land an undisclosed sum from Bezos’ investment firm, that’s an aberration. Tenstorrent still must go through the wringer. We sat down with the startup’s vice president of investor relations and asked what’s been happening behind the scenes.

Tenstorrent just closed $693 million in its Series D round.

In a media environment where people constantly crave more AI stories, news of a hot AI processor company gets headlines. But among investors, we suspect that things are much different. Just being an AI company doesn’t grease the fast track to funding. 

That got me thinking.


This is great stuff. Let’s get started.

Already have an account? Sign in.