The Nuvia acquisition is the best precedent: Qualcomm did not buy Nuvia because it lacked Arm licenses or CPU design capability. It bought Nuvia because it wanted the team led by Gerard Williams III and the ability to accelerate its CPU roadmap by years with the Oryon IP.
That said, Tenstorrent looks less like an AI accelerator acquisition and more like a talent and future-architecture acquisition, as in addition to the talented team, Qualcomm would also get plenty of RISC-V expertise, which will make it the leading developer of RISC-V-based solutions in general.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom\u2019s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-24/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Anton Shilov Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
Findecanor The RISC-V community got wind of this about a month ago, and are in up-roar. Tenstorrent has been the community's favourite, because it is the company most likely to soon release a RISC-V CPU which can deliver performance competitive with offerings from Qualcomm, Apple, Intel and AMD. It also has the legendary Jim Keller at the helm. So soon after having mourned Ventana Micro… .. and it is not as if people liked Qualcomm much before, either. Reply
ezst036 Qualcomm did eventually triumph against that lawsuit brought on by ARM Holdings. Bet that gives them at least some incentive to not want to stay with ARM architectures forever. Besides. Having the employ of one Jim Keller would do Qualcomm well for its near future CPU plans. Reply
bit_user Someone should buy it! I thought AMD was more than likely, but I guess they feel their client needs are satisfied by the IP they got from Xilinx and are presumably happy with their current datacenter product roadmap. That said, Nvidia's acquisition of Groq should probably have them reconsidering… Reply
bit_user ezst036 said: Besides. Having the employ of one Jim Keller would do Qualcomm well for its near future CPU plans. LOL, I think Qualcomm is one of the few big chip makers he has yet to work for! I guess there's also Nvidia. Not sure if he'd ever consider going to IBM. Reply
ekio One more company with great potential bought to do nothing with, that will end up being just a 10 lines paragraph on a larger wikipedia page instead of changing history and making its own name. So f-ing lame. These companies claiming they want to change and improve the tech landscape are always just baits from the founders to get rich.. So pathetic. Reply
bit_user ekio said: One more company with great potential bought to do nothing with, that will end up being just a 10 lines paragraph on a larger wikipedia page instead of changing history and making its own name. So f-ing lame. These companies claiming they want to change and improve the tech landscape are always just baits from the founders to get rich.. So pathetic. Weird take, IMO. Tenstorrent was founded to be an AI chip company , since day 1. Jim Keller only joined several years after its founding. It was only a while after that when they branched out into designing their own RISC-V cores, but that wasn't their original mission. Their goal was to be a little bit better than most of the other AI chip companies and thereby survive, thrive, and hopefully get rich. I think the RISC-V cores were something they did as a fallback plan, in case the main business plan of making AI chips fell through. Of course, the cores served an immediate need within their accelerators, but they had been licensing cores from SiFive prior to that, and probably could've continued to do so. As far as getting acquired, that's simply the goal of most chip startups. Making chips is a very expensive game, requiring lots of up-front investment and long lead times. Size really does give one an advantage, in that industry. Reply
ekio bit_user said: Weird take, IMO. Tenstorrent was founded to be an AI chip company , since day 1. Jim Keller only joined several years after its founding. It was only a while after that when they branched out into designing their own RISC-V cores, but that wasn't their original mission. Their goal was to be a little bit better than most of the other AI chip companies and thereby survive, thrive, and hopefully get rich. I think the RISC-V cores were something they did as a fallback plan, in case the main business plan of making AI chips fell through. Of course, the cores served an immediate need within their accelerators, but they had been licensing cores from SiFive prior to that, and probably could've continued to do so. As far as getting acquired, that's simply the goal of most chip startups. Making chips is a very expensive game, requiring lots of up-front investment and long lead times. Size really does give one an advantage, in that industry. My take is that startups do not try to be themselves, they accept to be bought after the first big dollars offer. The companies that make history are the ones that stand their ground and say no! I don't want to become a lame subproject from the sub AI division of Qualcomm, We want to be TensTorrent! and it's us who will buy Qualcomm in 20 years because we will become better, bigger. Just like Nvidia never sold to Intel, and today, they could buy them like if it was a piece of bread. If SiFive sold to Intel, they would just have been killed when Intel stock dropped to subwater levels (only to be save by taxpayer money thanks to their buddy Trump), but they said no to that ! But this mentality is rare, and we end up with the same 10 ish big companies doing the same things for the past 30+ years…. I never said it's easier, but Jim Keller is already rich as fuck, he will never suffer from needing money, so he has nothing to gain having a billion instead of hundreds of milions. But he can choose to be the guy who always was an employee vs being the guy who finished his career as the founder of a key company. Reply
bit_user ekio said: My take is that startups do not try to be themselves, they accept to be bought after the first big dollars offer. No, a lot of them will hold out for the best offer they think they can get. SiFive reportedly rebuffed an acquisition offer by Intel, for instance. I'd imagine they thought it was either too low for their current worth or just lower than they thought they could eventually get. ekio said: The companies that make history are the ones that stand their ground and say no! I don't want to become a lame subproject from the sub AI division of Qualcomm, We want to be TensTorrent! So, I've actually worked for startups, and it's rare to find one with a capitalization structure which would even allow them to do that. Most of the time, they take too much money from Venture Capital firms to resist a good acquisition (i.e. unless they're pretty confident they can do better). You pretty much need the founder to have a dominant stake in the company, otherwise it's the investors who have the final say. Knowing how the system works, everybody involved with the company will know that it was built to be aqcuired. ekio said: Just like Nvidia never sold to Intel, and today, they could buy them like if it was a piece of bread. At that point, Nvidia had been publicly traded for at least half a decade. The board probably felt Intel's offer undervalued the company and Intel simply didn't have the fortitude to pursue a hostile takeover. But, if we're expanding the discussion to talk about publicly-traded companies, then it's definitely not a matter of principle. Nearly all of them are pretty much governed by their investors. It's exceedingly rare that you have a case like Facebook/Meta, where the founder retains a controlling share of the company. ekio said: If SiFive sold to Intel, they would just have been killed when Intel stock dropped to subwater levels Probably not killed , but sold or spun out. Like they did with Altera and MobilEye (I think). But, if Intel had bought them, then maybe Intel would've made strategic plans involving them and couldn't have killed them. ekio said: I never said it's easier, but Jim Keller is already rich as …, he will never suffer from needing money, so he has nothing to gain having a billion instead of hundreds of milions. Why do you think it's his decision? I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a controlling stake in the company. It's also not clear to me that he has a vision for the company that's incompatible with what Qualcomm wants to do with it. ekio said: But he can choose to be the guy who always was an employee vs being the guy who finished his career as the founder of a key company. He wasn't a founder. I already explained this, in the previous post. Back when it was founded, he was probably still working at Tesla. Then, he went to Intel, and then he went to Tenstorrent! Reply
TerryLaze bit_user said: Someone should buy it! I thought AMD was more than likely, but I guess they feel their client needs are satisfied by the IP they got from Xilinx and are presumably happy with their current datacenter product roadmap. That said, Nvidia's acquisition of Groq should probably have them reconsidering… What would AMD buy it for?!?! Integrating it into their own products would take forever and would not be financially viable, and making them as they are would mean that they bought competition for their own products… The only reason for them to buy would be to bury the tech and delete one competitor, but that would not be worth giving away 10% of the company (current market cap) because they sure as heck can't pay 8-10bil in cash and keep the lights on. Reply
bit_user TerryLaze said: What would AMD buy it for?!?! Integrating it into their own products would take forever AMD announced the acquisition of Xilinx in Oct 2020 and completed it in Feb, 2022. In the first half of 2023, they launched their Phoenix APUs which contained XDNA NPUs they had acquired from Xilinx. That's pretty much a record, in terms integrating new IP. TerryLaze said: The only reason for them to buy would be to bury the tech and delete one competitor, No, Tenstorrent doesn't (yet) have a major market presence, other than some embedded design wins. Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/qualcomm-mulls-taking-over-jim-kellers-tenstorrent-report-claims-deal-for-ai-chipmaker-would-value-the-company-at-between-usd8-billion-and-usd10-billion#main
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