Jeff Bezos has come up with a bold move in the tech world. He is now betting on Tenstorrent startup with big ambitions in the AI chip market and to compete against Nvidia. He participated in a $700 million funding round along with Samsung, LG Electronics and Fidelity.

Nvidia has long been the leader in AI hardware. It is powering everything from advanced machine learning models to massive data centers. Tenstorrent is led by semiconductor pioneer Jim Keller and he believes that there is room for a more affordable and efficient solution.

Keller has an impressive track record with companies like Apple and Tesla. He believes that open-source is the way forward saying that the open platforms attract talent and strengthens collaboration. Tenstorrent is backing the RISC-V chip architecture and it is said to be a challenger to the proprietary designs of giants like Arm Holdings.

The vision is promising and the path ahead is equipped with challenges. The dominance of Nvidia is built on years of expertise and billions in revenue from AI-focused chips. Tenstorrent has signed $150 million in customer contracts and it is believed to be an impressive start.

The fresh funding is learned to help in the growth of the engineering team and build advanced AI training servers.

The approach of Tenstorrent has attracted support from other prominent investors such as Hyundai Motor Group and Canada’s Export Development agency. It means that the investors have good confidence in the vision of Keller.

Tenstorrent is of course a small player today compared to Nvidia, but its ambitions seem a shift is on the card in the way industry thinks about AI technology. It is basically focusing on affordability, open standard, and collaboration. All these are laying the groundwork for a future where Nvidia is not the only name in the game.