Jim Keller, who also worked at Tesla and Apple acquisition P.A. Semi, will become president and CTO of the firm. Tenstorrent, founded in 2016, makes AI chips modelled on human brain functions to increase energy efficiency. It has raised US$33.7 million in venture funding to date from investors including Real Ventures, according to PitchBook data, and is an alumnus of the Creative Destruction Lab program. (Reuters, The Logic)

Talking point: Intel still dominates the chip market, but the growth of AI applications has opened up space for other players. For example, Nvidia’s graphic-processing units have proved well suited to algorithms, fuelling its stock market rise and motivating its US$40-billion September 2020 acquisition of chip-design firm Arm. Many of Canada’s largest semiconductor companies sold to foreign competitors in the early 2010s, capping a sector decline; exports by such firms and other electronic component manufacturers dropped from a recent high of $4.18 billion in 2005 to $2.74 billion in 2019, Statistics Canada data shows.