The name “Tenstorrent” has become increasingly visible in Japan, especially following its partnership with Rapidus.
Tenstorrent is not just another startup. Rather, I believe it’s one of the most noteworthy collectives aiming beyond the GPU era. And above all, it has Jim Keller.
Keller is a man who has walked through the very history of CPU architecture. AMD, Apple, Tesla, Intel—line up the projects he’s been involved with, and you essentially get the history of modern processor design itself. When he joined Tenstorrent as CTO and President, it was already clear this wasn’t an ordinary company. Now, he’s their CEO.
Tenstorrent’s vision is to modularize components like AI chips and build a distributed computing platform within an open ecosystem. Instead of relying on a single, massive, closed GPU-centric chip, they aim to create a world where computing functions can be structured in optimal configurations as needed.
This marks a shift in design philosophy—and a democratization of hardware.
Since 2023, Tenstorrent has made a full-scale entry into the Japanese market, working with Rapidus to develop a 2nm-generation edge AI chip.
They also play a key role in Japan’s government-backed semiconductor talent development programs, running the advanced course that sends dozens of Japanese engineers to the company’s U.S. headquarters for hands-on OJT training. This isn’t just technical support or a supplier-client relationship. It’s a level of collaboration that could be described as integration.
Few American tech companies have entered a national initiative in Japan so deeply, and even fewer have respected Japan’s autonomy to this extent while openly sharing their technology.
Tenstorrent is sometimes positioned as a competitor to NVIDIA, but I think it occupies a more nuanced space.
In terms of physical deployment of AI chips, NVIDIA’s massive platform will likely remain dominant for some time.
However, Tenstorrent’s strategy is built on an entirely different dimension—heterogeneous integration with general-purpose CPUs, application-specific optimization, and the scalability of distributed AI systems.
Rather than challenging NVIDIA head-on, they seem to be targeting all the areas NVIDIA isn’t addressing.
They are also actively promoting open-source software stacks and the adoption of RISC-V. In that sense, their approach diverges significantly from ARM as well.
Tenstorrent operates across hardware and software, development and education, design and manufacturing. Their very presence puts pressure on the status quo of hardware design, introducing a kind of freedom—freedom to choose, to combine, to transform.
Companies like Tenstorrent defy simple classification. It’s hard to predict whether they’ll end up being competitors or collaborators in any given domain.
But one thing is clear: they chose Japan as a key field of engagement and have embedded themselves here at an unprecedented depth.
That alone is a fact worth paying attention to.