Qualcomm is in talks to acquire AI chip design startup Tenstorrent, according to reports surfacing around June 15, 2026. The deal is said to be valued at roughly $8 billion to $10 billion, a substantial premium over the startup's most recent valuation.
June 15, 2026 · M&A in AI Silicon
Qualcomm in Talks to Buy AI Chip Startup Tenstorrent for up to $10B
The smartphone-chip giant is reportedly negotiating to acquire Jim Keller's RISC-V AI accelerator company — at roughly triple its most recent $3.2B valuation — as it pushes deeper into the data center and AI market.
$8–10B
Reported deal value under discussion
~3×
Premium over prior $3.2B valuation
~4%
Brief rise in Qualcomm shares on the report
Valuation, scaled to size
Each block ≈ $1 billion — the reported price dwarfs Tenstorrent's recent valuation.
$8–10B
Reported deal value
The target: Tenstorrent
Founded
Approach
Funding
Blackhole cards
120 Tensix cores · 28–32GB GDDR6 · up to 300W · $999–$1,399
Wormhole cards
n150/n300 · Ethernet-based scalable interconnect
Galaxy system
32-chip · 23 PFLOPS (Block FP8) · 1TB DRAM · from $440,000
The bull case
Open RISC-V alternative to break away from CUDA
Qualcomm gains a serious data-center entry point
Attractive for local AI dev & cost-conscious inference
The challenges
Software maturity — unimplemented low-level functions
Smaller ecosystem versus NVIDIA
GDDR6 memory bandwidth limits vs HBM
Talks remain at the negotiation stage — a deal is not guaranteed.
Price could still change or talks could fall apart entirely. Any formal announcement is expected to center on Qualcomm's upcoming Investor Day. If completed, the transaction would reshape Qualcomm's AI strategy and the competitive landscape of the RISC-V camp.
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