Qualcomm weighs Tenstorrent deal in $10B RISC-V push

Qualcomm has discussed buying Tenstorrent in a deal worth $8 billion to $10 billion, The Information reported Tuesday, June 16, citing an anonymous source.

The talks could still fall apart. If Qualcomm closes the deal, the chipmaker would gain a Canadian AI chip company built around RISC-V, the open instruction set architecture that gives chip designers more control than proprietary CPU licensing models.

Tenstorrent gives Qualcomm two assets at once: AI accelerator hardware for servers and a CPU team led by Jim Keller. Keller helped design chips at AMD, Apple, and Digital Equipment Corp., and he has spent recent years positioning Tenstorrent as a RISC-V alternative for AI compute.

Tenstorrent began selling its Galaxy Blackhole AI compute platform earlier this year. The system packs 32 Blackhole accelerators into a 6U enclosure. Each accelerator includes 768 RISC-V cores and runs with Tenstorrent’s software stack.

Qualcomm has spent years selling smartphone and edge silicon through its Snapdragon business, but Cristiano Amon has pushed the company toward data centers and AI infrastructure. A Tenstorrent purchase would give Qualcomm a stronger server story as cloud buyers look for alternatives to Nvidia GPUs and custom silicon from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

The deal would also sharpen Qualcomm’s RISC-V strategy. Qualcomm still depends on Arm cores across much of its Snapdragon line, even as it invests in its own CPU designs. Arm tried to cancel Qualcomm’s license to build custom Arm-based processors during their licensing fight, and that dispute gave Qualcomm a reason to reduce its reliance on Arm’s roadmap and contract terms.

Qualcomm already moved in that direction in December when it bought Ventana Micro Systems, a RISC-V CPU designer focused on data center and enterprise chips. Analysts estimated that deal at $200 million to $600 million, though Qualcomm did not disclose terms. Tenstorrent would represent a far larger bet.

RISC-V matters because engineers can implement the instruction set without paying the same type of licensing fees that Arm charges. That does not make chip design cheap. Companies still need CPU architects, verification teams, compilers, boards, firmware, and software support. Tenstorrent has spent its capital on those pieces, and Qualcomm could fold that work into a broader AI server platform.

A Qualcomm-owned Tenstorrent would put pressure on Arm in two ways. First, Qualcomm could use RISC-V for more internal designs and reduce the leverage Arm holds through licensing. Second, Qualcomm could show other chipmakers that RISC-V can support high-end AI systems, not only embedded controllers and experimental boards.

Arm has told investors that data center chips could become its largest revenue source. Qualcomm’s interest in Tenstorrent shows the same opportunity from another angle. Server CPUs, AI accelerators, and inference systems now sit at the center of the chip market, and buyers want more supplier choice.

The user impact sits one layer below the hardware. AI models need chips that can run inference at lower cost and lower power. If Qualcomm uses Tenstorrent’s designs to ship competitive AI servers, cloud providers could add more capacity without buying each accelerator from the same small group of vendors. That could reduce the cost of AI services for developers and customers.

The risk comes from execution. Qualcomm would need to integrate Tenstorrent’s hardware, software stack, sales motion, and engineering culture while it also pushes its own data center products. Chip acquisitions can stall when the buyer underestimates software support, customer qualification, and manufacturing schedules.

Qualcomm and Tenstorrent did not comment in the supplied report. Until the companies announce a signed agreement, customers should treat the talks as a signal of intent rather than a completed shift in the AI chip market.