Qualcomm is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire AI chip startup Tenstorrent in a deal that could value Jim Keller's company at between $8 billion and $10 billion, a move that would dramatically accelerate the smartphone giant's return to the data center.
A RISC-V bet against Nvidia
Tenstorrent, founded in 2016 and led by legendary chip architect Jim Keller, builds AI training and inference accelerators on the open RISC-V architecture and its in-house Tensix core. Its pitch is openness and price: an open instruction set, an open-source software stack and chip IP it licenses to others, positioned as an affordable alternative to Nvidia's costly GPUs. Acquiring it would hand Qualcomm a ready-made accelerator architecture aimed squarely at the inference workloads that increasingly dominate AI infrastructure spending.
According to the reports, the price could still change and the talks could fail. Tenstorrent declined to comment, while Qualcomm said it does not "comment on rumors."
Qualcomm's data center comeback
Qualcomm exited the server market in 2018 to focus on smartphones, but it has been rebuilding its data center ambitions. The company teased a return with AI-focused CPUs in 2025, acquired Alphawave Semi for $2.4 billion and bought Arduino, Edge Impulse and Foundries.io to extend its edge reach. CEO Cristiano Amon has called the data center "a logical extension of our diversification strategy." A Tenstorrent deal would be among Qualcomm's largest ever, and the company's June 24 Investor Day is the likely venue for any confirmation.
Another consolidation signal
The talks underscore how aggressively incumbents are buying their way into AI silicon as the sector consolidates, a theme echoed by recent moves such as the Apple-Intel US foundry deal and Nvidia's push across the AI PC stack. For Tenstorrent, which raised $693 million in a 2024 Series D at a $2.6 billion valuation with backing from Jeff Bezos and Samsung, a sale near $10 billion would mark a steep markup and a notable exit for the open-hardware camp.
Reporting based on coverage from DatacenterDynamics, The Register and Tom's Hardware.