Tenstorrent — AI supply-chain exposure

Tenstorrent is a fabless designer of AI accelerators and RISC-V processors, led by chip architect Jim Keller. It sells its own AI cards — the Wormhole and Blackhole lines — and, unusually, licenses the underlying RISC-V CPU and AI IP to others, positioning itself as an open alternative to the closed, proprietary stack that dominates AI compute today. It backs that ambition with a marquee investor base including Samsung and Bezos Expeditions.

Its structural hook is openness as a wedge. The dominant accelerator ecosystem locks developers into one company's software; Tenstorrent's bet is that hyperscalers and sovereign buyers will pay for a licensable, RISC-V-based design they can own and customise. That is a credible long shot rather than a settled position, which is why the model treats it as a lightly weighted ASIC producer — real optionality on the industry wanting a second architecture, far from proven.