Japan has requested that Tenstorrent, an AI chip firm, teach up to 200 Japanese chip designers at its US facilities over a five-year period in order to revitalize the country’s semiconductor sector.

Tenstorrent and Japan’s Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC) contributed a total of $50 million in the deal, which was disclosed on Tuesday.

According to Tenstorrent,“train and elevate Japanese engineering talent while simultaneously cultivating a strong CPU team for the company in Japan.”

The first batch of program participants is anticipated to begin in April 2025, and nominations will be accepted from major Japanese universities and tech companies. Before returning home, they will receive one or two years of training in technology, such as Tenstorrent’s RISC-V Ascalon architecture, Tensix IP, and AI and HPC software stacks.

The Japanese government will fund the training program for Tenstorrent and the engineers, and the firm will retain any RISC-V chip blueprints created while the engineers were there.

In exchange for perhaps licensing Tenstorrent’s technology, the engineers are expected to work for silicon design firms in Japan.

“This is a groundbreaking program between Tenstorrent and Japan, and sending Japan’s top engineers to become experts in Tenstorrent’s technology will be pivotal in growing their ecosystem and propelling forward our efforts here as we build our edge 2nm AI accelerator in partnership with them,” extolled LSTC charman Tetsuro Higashi.

According to David Bennett, chief customer officer at Tenstorrent, the agreement would help train “Japan’s best and brightest in multiple disciplines related to high performance compute, AI hardware design, and advanced software.” It was an addition to an existing agreement with Rapidus, a Japanese advanced logic semiconductors company.

In addition to confirming that it will establish a design center in Tokyo, Tenstorrent has partnered with Rapidus to co-develop semiconductor intellectual property for AI edge devices, which will be produced at Rapidus’s proposed, government-subsidized factory.

Japan’s semiconductor industry flourished in the 1980s, when it held more than half of the global market. However, in the 1990s, it started to face more competition from countries like Taiwan and South Korea. As of 2019, Japan’s share of the global semiconductor market was just 10%.

The country is currently granting significant subsidies and programs, such as those given to Rapidus and Tenstorrent, in an attempt to return to its former glory.