AI chip startup SambaNova Systems has closed the first tranche of its Series F funding round, bringing in $1 billion at a valuation of $11 billion. The round was led by General Atlantic, and the company expects additional investors to finalize their participation within weeks.
"In the next few weeks, a few more investors will be coming in, and the second close is likely to finish up," said Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova, in a recent interview.
This latest infusion of capital arrives approximately five months after the Palo Alto, California-based company introduced its SN50 chip and announced a $350 million Series E in February. Prior to that, SambaNova had reportedly been in acquisition discussions with Intel, with a deal valued at roughly $1.6 billion, according to reporting from Bloomberg News published in December.
Independence vs. Acquisition: An Open Question
When asked whether completing both a Series E and a Series F within such a short window signaled that SambaNova - founded in 2017 - had committed to remaining an independent company, Liang declined to give a definitive answer. He acknowledged that the company continues to receive unsolicited interest from potential acquirers. "We're always being approached," he said. While he left the door open to an exit, he suggested that the company's current growth trajectory points more naturally toward an eventual public offering. "Being public at some point" is the more likely outcome given the momentum the company is experiencing, he indicated.
A Deepening Relationship with Intel
Intel has been a backer of SambaNova since its Series C round and participated again in this latest financing. The relationship between the two companies has grown considerably over the past several months. Five months ago, SambaNova announced a multi-year partnership with Intel centered on AI inference development built on Intel's Xeon processor architecture. The companies now collaborate on product development and jointly bring those products to market.
"That gives us a great relationship with them that lets us leverage the scale of Intel with the technology we have," Liang said, describing the arrangement as mutually beneficial - combining Intel's manufacturing and distribution reach with SambaNova's specialized inference technology.
JPMorganChase Selects SambaNova for On-Premises Inference
Alongside the funding announcement, SambaNova disclosed that JPMorganChase has designated it as an "inference-infrastructure partner." The bank plans to deploy SambaNova's SN40L and SN50 systems to run secure, on-premises AI inference workloads within its own facilities.
Liang described the partnership as a significant development, both for SambaNova and for the broader financial services industry. "Having JPMorgan Chase decide they're going to use SambaNova for their inference solution is a big deal," he said. "It sends a message to the banking industry that it's time not to completely depend on cloud services. These banks want heterogeneous infrastructure."
He characterized the JPMorgan win as a broader market signal. Major financial institutions are now building private, secure infrastructure to run inference on their most sensitive AI models - a trend he expects to extend well beyond banking. Enterprises and government entities are "just starting their AI journey," Liang said, noting that most of the AI industry's growth so far has been concentrated among technology companies, model developers, and frontier research labs. That leaves what he described as "a huge amount of revenue" still untapped in the enterprise and public sector segments.
Product Timeline: SN40L and SN50
SambaNova launched its SN40L chip in September 2023, initially available via cloud deployment, with on-premises availability following in November 2023. Its next-generation SN50, unveiled in February 2026, is scheduled to begin shipping to customers during the second half of 2026. SoftBank has been named as the first deployment partner for the SN50, according to Liang.
The Case for Premium Inference at Scale
Liang positioned SambaNova's core advantage as what he called "premium inference" - the ability to run the largest AI models quickly and at scale. Today's frontier AI models can span trillions of parameters, and Liang argued that SambaNova's hardware was designed from the ground up to handle workloads of that magnitude. A key capability he highlighted is the company's ability to fit multi-trillion-parameter models onto a single rack, enabling faster processing without the latency penalties associated with distributing workloads across multiple systems.
Three Customer Segments Driving Growth
SambaNova has identified three primary categories of customers it is targeting. The first is sovereign clouds - government-backed initiatives in which national governments fund local partners to construct private cloud infrastructure. Liang expects SambaNova to play a central role in this segment as countries seek to build domestic AI capabilities. The second category is neoclouds, newer cloud providers building out AI-optimized infrastructure. The third is enterprises deploying AI for their own internal use cases.
In addition to JPMorganChase, SambaNova counts Saudi Aramco, Intel, and several Japanese firms among its customer base.
Planned Use of Proceeds
SambaNova intends to deploy the new capital to scale its operations and strengthen its supply chain. Liang described demand as an "incredible wave" that the company must be prepared to meet. "We're using that capital to secure the supply chain," he said, framing this as a critical step toward fulfilling orders and procuring the materials needed to deliver on commitments over the next 12 months.
Investor Roster
The funding round drew participation from a broad group of investors. In addition to lead investor General Atlantic, other participants include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group. A mix of new and returning investors also joined the round, including A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, BlackRock, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, the Qatar Investment Authority, Vista Equity Partners, and Volantis.
