TORONTO – Janu­ary 6, 2021

Ten­stor­rent, a hard­ware start-up deve­lo­ping next gene­ra­ti­on com­pu­ters, announ­ces the addi­ti­on of indus­try vete­ran Jim Kel­ler as Pre­si­dent, CTO, and board member.

“Ten­stor­rent was foun­ded on the belief that the ongo­ing shift towards ML-cen­tric soft­ware neces­si­ta­tes a cor­re­spon­ding trans­for­ma­ti­on in com­pu­ta­tio­nal capa­bi­li­ties,” said Lju­bi­sa Bajic, Tenstorrent’s CEO. “The­re is nobo­dy more capa­ble of exe­cu­ting this visi­on than Jim Kel­ler, a lea­der who is equal­ly gre­at at desig­ning com­pu­ters, cul­tures, and orga­niza­ti­ons. I am thril­led to be working with Jim and bey­ond exci­ted about the pos­si­bi­li­ties our part­ner­ship unlocks.”

As CTO, Kel­ler will lead Tenstorrent’s efforts to be the hard­ware solu­ti­on nee­ded to address Soft­ware 2.0, the exci­ting indus­try shift towards using machi­ne lear­ning methods to sol­ve pro­blems pre­vious­ly addres­sed by tra­di­tio­nal software.

“Soft­ware 2.0 is the lar­gest oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­pu­ting inno­va­ti­on in a long time. Vic­to­ry requi­res a com­pre­hen­si­ve re-thin­king of com­pu­te and low level soft­ware,” Kel­ler said. “Ten­stor­rent has made impres­si­ve pro­gress, and with the most pro­mi­sing archi­tec­tu­re out the­re, we are poi­sed to beco­me a next gen com­pu­ting giant.”

Keller’s addi­ti­on to both the team and the board is a strong vote of con­fi­dence in Tenstorrent’s abili­ty to beco­me a major play­er in a sec­tor curr­ent­ly domi­na­ted by behemoths.

“Tenstorrent’s dif­fe­ren­tia­ted approach to acce­le­ra­ting AI, along with the team’s pedi­gree, are what con­vin­ced Eclip­se to initi­al­ly invest in 2017. We are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing their ambi­tious visi­on, and Jim’s arri­val only fur­ther bols­ters our faith in that visi­on,” said Greg Reichow, part­ner at Eclip­se and Ten­stor­rent board member.

Kel­ler joi­n­ed Ten­stor­rent fol­lo­wing two years as Seni­or Vice Pre­si­dent of Intel’s Sili­con Engi­nee­ring Group. He has held roles as Tesla’s Vice Pre­si­dent of Auto­pi­lot and Low Vol­ta­ge Hard­ware, Cor­po­ra­te Vice Pre­si­dent and Chief Cores Archi­tect at AMD, and Vice Pre­si­dent of Engi­nee­ring and Chief Archi­tect at P.A. Semi, which was acqui­red by Apple Inc.

During his long and impactful care­er he has hel­ped crea­te some of today’s most ico­nic tech­no­lo­gy inclu­ding the AMD Zen, K7 (Ath­lon) and K8 micro-archi­tec­tures, Apple A4-A7 pro­ces­sors, the x86-64 ins­truc­tion set and Hyper­Trans­port interconnect.

 

About Ten­stor­rent

Ten­stor­rent is a next-gene­ra­ti­on com­pu­ting com­pa­ny with the mis­si­on of addres­sing the rapidly gro­wing com­pu­te demands for soft­ware 2.0.

Head­quar­te­red in Toron­to, Cana­da, with U.S. offices in Aus­tin, Texas, and Sili­con Val­ley, Ten­stor­rent brings tog­e­ther experts in the field of com­pu­ter archi­tec­tu­re, asic design, advan­ced sys­tems, and neu­ral net­work com­pi­lers. Ten­stor­rent is backed by Eclip­se Ven­tures and Real Ven­tures, among others.