It’s not often you see a Canadian hardware company attracting significant strategic investment from global industry giants.
But at this crucial moment in the AI race, that’s exactly what has happened with Toronto-based hardware startup Tenstorrent, which secured $100 million USD in investment this summer from a variety of parties including Korean consumer electronics companies (Samsung) and auto manufacturers (Kia and Hyundai).
“So many Canadian organizations today are sending their dollars, their economic capital, to AWS, to Azure, to Google. There really is no Canadian response to this today.”
– Eric Duffy
Why do consumer electronics and car makers want AI chips in their hardware? And how does Tenstorrent’s open standard-backed offering stand up to the likes of Intel, Apple, and Nvidia?
Compute power, architecture, and IP are all things that my co-host Rob Kenedi and Tenstorrent senior director of business development Eric Duffy discuss on this episode (recorded live at ALL IN 2023 in Montréal). But Duffy also points to the nascent hardware company’s leadership pedigree, which has origins with Tesla, Apple’s M1 chip, and a bunch of other products bound to earn some cred with our podcast audience.
Unsurpisingly, there’s also discussion about Canadian AI’s commercialization difficulties, as well as the opportunities and gaps standing before Canadian hardware companies.
Let’s dig in.
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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Produced & edited by Kattie Laur. Sponsored by Float and SAAS NORTH (use the code ‘betakit25’ to get your tickets).