Key Takeaways
- • Tether joined Tenstorrent's $1.5 billion Series E round at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation, according to Tenstorrent's Oct. 19 statement and Tether's Oct. 20 announcement.
- • Neither Tether nor Tenstorrent disclosed Tether's investment amount, its ownership stake, or how the position will be recorded on its balance sheet.
- • Trace Capital and Innovation X led the round; other participants included ARK Invest, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Eclipse and XTX Markets.
- • Tenstorrent, led by CEO Jim Keller, will use proceeds for Galaxy server deployment, AI and CPU chip development, and commercial expansion; its previous round raised more than $693 million in December 2024 at a $2 billion pre-money valuation.
- • The investment extends Tether's AI activity beyond software and payments into hardware, alongside its AIsa agent-payments investment and offline speech recognition releases.
Summary
Tether has joined Tenstorrent's $1.5 billion Series E funding round at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation, adding an AI hardware position to its growing portfolio of AI software and payments initiatives. Tenstorrent disclosed the completed round on Oct. 19, and Tether Capital announced its participation the following day. Reuters reported the completed financing on Oct. 19. Neither company disclosed how much Tether invested, what percentage of Tenstorrent it owns, or how the investment will be recorded. Tether described its El Salvador-based investment arm as deploying company profits and excess reserves, but did not specify which funds paid for the stake. Tenstorrent's investor list names Tether Investments, while Tether's own announcement uses Tether Capital.
Tenstorrent identified Trace Capital and Innovation X as the round's leaders. Other named participants included ARK Invest, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Morgan Stanley, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Eclipse and XTX Markets. The company describes the transaction as an equity raise. Its previous round raised more than $693 million in December 2024 at a $2 billion pre-money valuation, per Reuters. Tenstorrent, based in Santa Clara, California and led by Jim Keller, plans to use the proceeds to deploy Galaxy servers, develop AI and CPU designs, and expand commercial operations. Its product line ranges from individual cards and workstations to racks and superclusters, and it licenses its TT-Ascalon CPU technology and Tensix AI cores, with Samsung and LG among named customers. Keller, who previously led Tesla's self-driving chip work and held chip-design roles at Apple and AMD, said, "We built one architecture and sell it at every size."
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino framed the investment around AI that people can "build, run and control themselves," consistent with Tether's preference for systems that developers and businesses can operate independently of proprietary hardware and cloud providers. Tenstorrent describes its software stack as open source and says customers can run models locally or within their own facilities. The announcement did not include an independent cost comparison against competing services.
The chip investment follows other recent AI moves. Tether and HIVEN joined a seed extension for AIsa, whose Oct. 15 announcement put cumulative funding above $9 million. AIsa's platform lets enterprise AI agents purchase data, models and services through one interface, with controls for permissions, budgets and approvals; individual investment amounts were not disclosed. Tether also released QVAC TranscribePsy on Oct. 14, a 254-million-parameter offline speech recognition model that processes audio on-device. The company reported a 6.58% word error rate on Multilingual LibriSpeech and 21.56% on Common Voice, and published model weights for mobile and laptop configurations.
For context, Tether's most recent reserve disclosures predate the Tenstorrent investment. Its July 31 release reported assets of $187.75 billion against liabilities of $183.64 billion as of June 30, with a $4.11 billion excess reserve buffer and Q2 profit of $1.5 billion. An Aug. 13 KPMG audit opinion covering 2025 reported reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion at Dec. 31, 2025. These figures describe separate reporting dates and do not disclose the source of funds for the Tenstorrent stake.
Tenstorrent identified Trace Capital and Innovation X as the round's leaders. Other named participants included ARK Invest, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Morgan Stanley, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Eclipse and XTX Markets. The company describes the transaction as an equity raise. Its previous round raised more than $693 million in December 2024 at a $2 billion pre-money valuation, per Reuters. Tenstorrent, based in Santa Clara, California and led by Jim Keller, plans to use the proceeds to deploy Galaxy servers, develop AI and CPU designs, and expand commercial operations. Its product line ranges from individual cards and workstations to racks and superclusters, and it licenses its TT-Ascalon CPU technology and Tensix AI cores, with Samsung and LG among named customers. Keller, who previously led Tesla's self-driving chip work and held chip-design roles at Apple and AMD, said, "We built one architecture and sell it at every size."
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino framed the investment around AI that people can "build, run and control themselves," consistent with Tether's preference for systems that developers and businesses can operate independently of proprietary hardware and cloud providers. Tenstorrent describes its software stack as open source and says customers can run models locally or within their own facilities. The announcement did not include an independent cost comparison against competing services.
The chip investment follows other recent AI moves. Tether and HIVEN joined a seed extension for AIsa, whose Oct. 15 announcement put cumulative funding above $9 million. AIsa's platform lets enterprise AI agents purchase data, models and services through one interface, with controls for permissions, budgets and approvals; individual investment amounts were not disclosed. Tether also released QVAC TranscribePsy on Oct. 14, a 254-million-parameter offline speech recognition model that processes audio on-device. The company reported a 6.58% word error rate on Multilingual LibriSpeech and 21.56% on Common Voice, and published model weights for mobile and laptop configurations.
For context, Tether's most recent reserve disclosures predate the Tenstorrent investment. Its July 31 release reported assets of $187.75 billion against liabilities of $183.64 billion as of June 30, with a $4.11 billion excess reserve buffer and Q2 profit of $1.5 billion. An Aug. 13 KPMG audit opinion covering 2025 reported reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion at Dec. 31, 2025. These figures describe separate reporting dates and do not disclose the source of funds for the Tenstorrent stake.
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