Glossary
Tenstorrent
An AI accelerator startup designing RISC-V-based chips (Wormhole, Blackhole, Grendel) with an open software stack, positioned as the leading open alternative to NVIDIA at the silicon layer.
The most-watched open-silicon AI accelerator company. Tenstorrent designs chips around RISC-VsiliconAn open instruction set architecture, royalty-free and modular, increasingly used in AI accelerator cores (Tenstorrent, SiFive Intelligence) as the open alternative to ARM and x86. Open full entry cores plus custom tensor units, with the software stack (Metalium, TT-NN, Tenstorrent Buda) open-source under permissive licenses. The Wormhole and Blackhole product lines are shipping; the larger Grendel design targets training workloads in 2026.
The strategic pitch is “open compute”: every layer from ISA to compiler to high-level frameworks is auditable and modifiable. Jim Keller (CPU architecture legend) is CEO; the funding includes Hyundai and Samsung. Performance on benchmarked open LLMs has been competitive with mid-tier NVIDIA parts; whether Tenstorrent can match Hopper or Blackwell on production training workloads is the open question.
Full coverage at /projects/tenstorrent.