Tenstorrent secures $100m funding from Hyundai, Kia, and Samsung

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【Summary】Tenstorrent, an AI and RISC-V chip company, has raised $100m in funding from Hyundai, Kia, and Samsung. The investment was structured as debt that will convert to stock later on. Tenstorrent builds scalable AI accelerators for cloud and Edge, aiming to compete with Nvidia. It also licenses its designs to other companies. Hyundai plans to use Tenstorrent designs in future vehicles. Tenstorrent previously signed a deal with LG for its chips in smart TVs.

FutureCar Staff Aug 14, 2023 7:24 AM PT

Tenstorrent secures $100m funding from Hyundai, Kia, and Samsung

Tenstorrent, an AI and RISC-V startup, has recently raised a significant amount of investment. Prior to this latest deal, the company had already raised $234.5 million, with a valuation of $1 billion in its previous round. However, the investment in Tenstorrent was structured as a debt that will convert to stock at a later date. Therefore, the company will not have a new valuation until it conducts another round of equity fundraising, which is planned for next year.

Tenstorrent specializes in building scalable artificial intelligence accelerators for both cloud and Edge applications, with the aim of competing with Nvidia's GPUs. Additionally, the company is developing a RISC-V CPU and also licenses its designs to other companies. This latest investment round saw $30 million invested by South Korean automotive manufacturer Hyundai, along with $20 million from Hyundai-subsidiary Kia. Samsung's Catalyst Fund contributed $50 million, and other investors included Fidelity Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, Epiq Capital, and Maverick Capital.

As part of the deal, Hyundai announced that it would utilize Tenstorrent designs in future vehicles from Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis. This comes after Hyundai launched its own semiconductor development group last year. Furthermore, Tenstorrent recently signed a deal with LG to incorporate its chips into smart TVs.

Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent, expressed his gratitude for the trust shown by Hyundai Motor Group and Samsung Catalyst Fund. He mentioned Hyundai Motor Group's impressive technological advancements, including their acquisition of Boston Dynamics, their joint venture with Aptiv, and now their investment in Tenstorrent. Keller himself has a strong background in chip architecture, having previously served as the lead chip architect at Intel and spending five years at AMD leading the company's Zen architecture. He was also instrumental in designing Apple's A4 and A5 processors, as well as Tesla's custom self-driving car silicon.