SambaNova, AI Chipmaker, Raises $1B at $11B Valuation Just Five Months After Last Funding Round

SambaNova Systems, a company specializing in AI chips, has raised $1 billion at a valuation of $11 billion, led by General Atlantic in the initial close of its Series F funding round, with more investors expected to join soon.

“In the next few weeks, additional investors will be joining us, and we anticipate that the second close will be finalized,” said Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova, during an interview with TechCrunch.

This round of funding comes about five months after the Palo Alto-based startup launched its SN50 chip, following a $350 million Series E round in February. Furthermore, SambaNova had engaged in acquisition talks with Intel, a deal that valued the company at approximately $1.6 billion, according to a December report from Bloomberg News.

When asked whether closing its Series E and F rounds signified an intention for SambaNova, founded in 2017, to remain independent, Liang remained vague, mentioning that the company still receives inquiries. “We’re consistently approached.” He noted that although the option for such an exit stays open in the evolving AI environment, the company’s growth and momentum might lead it towards “going public at some point.”

SambaNova’s partnership with Intel has strengthened, as Intel has supported the firm since its Series C and is participating in this latest funding round. Five months ago, the startup announced a multi-year collaboration with Intel focused on enhancing AI inference development leveraging Intel’s Xeon chip. Both companies are now co-developing products for the market. “This partnership deepens our relationship and enables us to harness Intel’s scale alongside our technology,” Liang stated.

Alongside the new investment, SambaNova revealed its designation by JPMorgan Chase as an “inference-infrastructure partner,” with its SN40L and SN50 systems set to facilitate secure, on-premises AI inference for the financial institution.

“Having JPMorgan Chase select SambaNova’s inference solution is significant,” Liang noted to TechCrunch. “It highlights to the banking sector the necessity of moving away from complete dependence on cloud services. These institutions are seeking heterogeneous [infrastructure].”

Liang indicated that the partnership with JPMorgan reflects wider market dynamics. He pointed out that banks “of JP Morgan’s caliber” are beginning to build their secure infrastructure for running inference on sensitive models, a trend he believes will extend beyond banking. Enterprises and government entities are “just embarking on their AI journey,” he added, with most growth currently among tech model creators and frontier labs, leaving “a vast potential for revenue” yet to be realized.

SambaNova launched its SN40L in September 2023, with cloud availability starting in November 2023. The next-generation SN50 was unveiled in February 2026 and is expected to start shipping to customers in the latter half of 2026, with SoftBank named as its first deployment partner, Liang noted.

Liang underscored SambaNova’s strength in providing “premium inference” by efficiently handling the largest models swiftly. Today’s frontier models contain trillions of parameters, and he asserted that SambaNova is specifically designed to manage these scales, capable of accommodating multi-trillion-parameter models on a single rack to maximize performance.

SambaNova identifies three primary customer categories: sovereign clouds, where governments aid local partners in establishing private clouds; neoclouds; and enterprises building their systems. Beyond JPMorgan, it serves clients including Saudi Aramco, Intel, and various Japanese companies.

The company intends to utilize the funds to broaden its operations and reinforce its supply chain to address what Liang described as an extraordinary surge in demand. “We’re using this capital to stabilize our supply chain,” he stated, emphasizing its importance for fulfilling orders and acquiring essential materials for the coming year.

Other participants in this funding round include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group. Additionally, both new and returning investors joined, including A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, BlackRock, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Vista Equity Partners, and Volantis.