NonPublic opens $118 million Tenstorrent deal to Australian investors

Australian private markets platform NonPublic has placed investors into a $1.5 billion funding round for US AI chipmaker Tenstorrent, which was valued at $6.2 billion. The deal gives eligible Australians access to another high-profile private tech company before it reaches public markets.

Why it matters: - NonPublic is widening Australian access to late-stage private AI companies that are usually only available to large global institutions. - The deal puts Australian wholesale investors into a round for a company valued at US$6.2 billion before any public listing. - The investment highlights how much value is being created in private technology companies before public investors can buy in.

What happened: - NonPublic invested about US$118 million in privately held AI chipmaker Tenstorrent. - The investment was part of Tenstorrent’s US$1.5 billion Series E round. - NonPublic opened the raise to Australian investors through vehicles under its AFSL. - The round valued Tenstorrent at US$6.2 billion. - Tenstorrent joins SpaceX, Perplexity and Groq among the private technology companies NonPublic has opened to Australian wholesale investors.

The details: - Australian wholesale investors typically would need minimum commitments of about US$1 million to US$5 million per deal to invest in companies like Tenstorrent directly. - NonPublic says the platform places Australian family offices and high-net-worth investors alongside major global institutions in the same deal. - Investors in the round included ARK Invest, Citadel, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price. - Houston-based private equity firm Trace Capital led the round. - Other new and returning investors included Cadence Design Systems, Sandisk, Tether and XTX Ventures. - Tenstorrent plans to use the funding to deploy its Galaxy servers at scale. - Those servers will continue serving open-weight large language models and video generation. - Milan Reinartz, NonPublic’s founder and CEO, said next-generation AI companies are staying private longer and that Australian investors have had few ways to back them before public markets. - Reinartz said the platform aims to close a gap that has kept Australian investors on the sidelines during what is often the most valuable stage of a company’s growth. - Jim Keller, Tenstorrent’s CEO, said the future of compute is open, scalable and owned by the people building on it.

Between the lines: - The deal underscores strong investor demand for AI infrastructure and chip companies, even at multi-billion-dollar private valuations. - NonPublic is positioning itself as a channel for Australian capital to access global technology growth earlier than traditional public market routes allow. - The presence of major fund managers and strategic investors in the round signals broad confidence in Tenstorrent’s hardware and systems strategy.

What’s next: - Tenstorrent will expand deployment of its Galaxy servers using the new capital. - NonPublic said it will keep opening similar pre-IPO opportunities to eligible Australian investors ahead of public markets. - The platform will continue targeting wholesale and sophisticated clients only under its Australian Financial Services Licence 482668.

The bottom line: - NonPublic is giving Australian investors a rare entry point into one of the most closely watched private AI chip companies, while Tenstorrent adds fresh capital to scale its compute platform.