Investing.com -- Tenspresso, a three-month-old artificial intelligence chip startup, is in talks to raise at least $50 million in new financing at a $500 million valuation, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding discussions come just weeks after the Sunnyvale, California-based company raised $20 million from Striker Venture Partners. Altimeter Capital Management has approached the startup to discuss an additional investment, the people said.
The company was co-founded by Dong Hyuk Woo and Harshit Khaitan, former engineers who worked together on Google’s tensor processing units for several years. Tenspresso currently has a 15-person team, with many employees joining from early AI chip teams at Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
The startup is developing chips designed for complex AI work, specifically targeting long context windows that would allow AI models to process larger and more diverse pools of data. The company believes there will be demand for such specialized chips in the coming years.
Tenspresso aims to complete the design of its first product in late 2027 or early 2028. The company is currently in negotiations with design and manufacturing partners and is seeking options outside the traditional silicon supply chain used by companies like Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Google to avoid potential backlogs in sourcing components and securing manufacturing capacity at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The firm is also in conversations with several strategic investors, and the size of the funding round could change as discussions progress, according to Bloomberg, citing one of the people familiar with the matter.
This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.
It sounds confident either way. That's the problem. InvestingPro is purpose-built AI for investors. WarrenAI Analyst 2.0 loops through live data up to 10 times per question, checking its own work before it answers, so you can skip the fact-checking. ProPicks AI picks stocks others miss. Our flagship Tech Titans strategy has returned 2.3X the S&P 500's returns over three years. Now 55% off for a limited time.