SambaNova Systems, a prominent AI chip manufacturer, has successfully secured $1 billion in its initial Series F funding round, achieving an impressive $11 billion valuation. This significant investment was spearheaded by General Atlantic, with expectations for additional investors to participate in a subsequent closing.
Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova, informed TechCrunch that "In the next few weeks, a few more investors will be coming in, and the second close is likely to finish up," indicating the ongoing momentum of the fundraising effort.
This latest capital injection follows approximately five months after the Palo Alto-based startup introduced its SN50 chip, concurrently with a $350 million Series E round in February. Notably, SambaNova had previously been involved in acquisition discussions with Intel, a deal that reportedly valued the company at around $1.6 billion, according to a December report by Bloomberg News.
When questioned about whether the completion of its Series E and F rounds signaled a commitment to independence for SambaNova, founded in 2017, Liang remained open-ended. He acknowledged the company's continuous appeal, stating, "We’re always being approached." While an acquisition remains a possibility in the dynamic AI market, Liang suggested that the company's strong momentum and growth trajectory would most likely lead it toward "being public at some point."
SambaNova's strategic alliance with Intel, which has been an investor since its Series C round and a participant in the latest funding, has significantly deepened. Five months prior, the company announced a multi-year partnership with Intel focused on AI inference development utilizing Intel's Xeon chip. This collaboration now involves joint product development and go-to-market strategies. Liang emphasized the synergy, stating, "That gives us a great relationship with them that lets us leverage the scale of Intel with the technology we have."
In addition to the new funding, SambaNova announced its selection by JPMorgan Chase as an "inference-infrastructure partner." The bank will deploy SambaNova's SN40L and SN50 systems to power secure, on-premises AI inference operations.
Liang highlighted the strategic importance of this partnership to TechCrunch, remarking, "Having JPMorgan Chase decide they’re going to use SambaNova for their inference solution is a big deal." He added, "It sends a message to the banking industry that it’s time not to completely depend on cloud services. These banks want heterogeneous [infrastructure]."
Liang further elaborated that the JPMorgan win serves as a crucial signal to the broader market. He noted that banks "of the caliber of JP Morgan" are increasingly building their own private, secure infrastructure to execute inference on their most sensitive models, a trend he anticipates will extend beyond the financial sector. Liang observed that enterprises and governments are "just starting their AI journey," with much of the current growth concentrated among tech's model makers and frontier labs, leaving what he termed "a huge amount of revenue" yet to be realized.
Regarding its product portfolio, SambaNova launched its SN40L in September 2023, making it available in the cloud and on-premises from November 2023. The next-generation SN50, unveiled in February 2026, is slated to commence customer shipments in the latter half of 2026, with SoftBank designated as its inaugural deployment partner, as noted by Liang.
Liang asserted that SambaNova's competitive advantage lies in its "premium inference" capabilities, enabling it to efficiently run the largest and most complex models at high speeds. He explained that today's frontier models encompass trillions of parameters, and SambaNova's architecture was specifically engineered to manage them at this scale. The company's technology allows multi-trillion-parameter models to be housed within a single rack, significantly enhancing processing speed.
SambaNova identifies three primary customer segments: sovereign clouds, where governments fund local partners to establish private cloud infrastructures—an area Liang expects SambaNova to play a central role; neoclouds; and enterprises developing solutions for their internal use. Beyond JPMorgan, the company also counts Saudi Aramco, Intel, and several Japanese firms among its clientele.
The proceeds from the funding round will be strategically deployed to scale the business and fortify its supply chain, addressing what Liang described as an unprecedented surge in demand. "We’re using that capital to secure the supply chain," he affirmed, emphasizing its critical role in fulfilling orders and acquiring the necessary materials for deliveries over the next 12 months.
Additional investors participating in this round include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group. New and existing investors such as A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, BlackRock, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Vista Equity Partners, and Volantis also contributed to the Series F funding.
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