Breaking

Qualcomm in Talks to Buy Tenstorrent for $8B–$10B

June 16, 2026 at 15:01 EDT

Infra & Chips
Funding & M&A
AI Agents

Qualcomm is in talks to acquire AI chip design startup Tenstorrent for around $8 billion to $10 billion, according to reports surfacing on June 15–16, 2026. The proposed price would represent a significant premium over Tenstorrent's most recent valuation.

June 15, 2026 · AI Chip M&A

Qualcomm in Talks to Buy Tenstorrent for $8B–$10B

Qualcomm is reportedly negotiating to acquire Jim Keller's RISC-V AI chip startup at a steep premium — a bid to accelerate its push from phones into the data center and AI server market.

$8–10B

Discussed acquisition price

+4%

Qualcomm (QCOM) share jump on the news

$1.8B+

Cumulative funding raised since 2016

A Valuation Built Up — Then Leapt Over

Each column scaled to the high end of the valuation guide ($B).

~$1B

2021

~$2.6B

Dec 2024
Series D

~$3.2B

Nov 2025
pre-money

$8–10B

REPORTED
DEAL

June 2026

What Qualcomm Would Acquire

Open RISC-V IP

Tensix cores designed to break from NVIDIA CUDA lock-in.

AI Accelerators

"Galaxy" server claims 23 PFLOPS (Block FP8) in 32 chips.

Jim Keller's Team

Architect known for AMD, Apple, Tesla and Intel work.

▲ Developer praise

Accessible hardware from $999
Open RISC-V & open-source software stack
Potential to rival NVIDIA on efficiency

▼ Lingering concerns

Software less mature than CUDA
Limited large-scale real-world deployments
Firmware cut Blackhole cores 140→120 (~1–2% hit)

Note: Talks remain ongoing — the price could change or the deal could fall through. Intel and Qualcomm both circled Tenstorrent as early as May 2026.

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