AI chip company SambaNova Systems has raised $1 billion in the first close of its Series F round at an $11 billion valuation led by General Atlantic, with more investors expected to join soon.
Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova, told TechCrunch that “we will likely see a few more investors come in in the coming weeks and a second deal will likely be finalized.”
The round comes about five months after the Palo Alto, California-based startup company unveiled its SN50 chip with a $350 million Series E in February. SambaNova was also in talks with Intel for a roughly $1.6 billion acquisition, according to a December report from Bloomberg News.
When asked if closing the Series E and F rounds meant SambaNova, founded in 2017, had decided to remain independent, Liang did not take a firm stance. He said the company remains interested. “We’re always reaching out.” The CEO said the door is open for such an exit in the dynamic AI market, but momentum and growth will likely lead the company toward “going public at some point.”
After Series C, SambaNova’s relationship with Intel, a sponsor and participant in this round, deepened. Five months ago, the nine-year-old startup announced a multi-year partnership with Intel to support the development of AI inference based on Intel’s Xeon chips. Currently, the two are co-developing products and bringing them to market together. “It gives us a great relationship with them that allows us to leverage Intel’s scale with the technology we have,” Liang said.
Along with the new funding, SambaNova said it has been selected as an “Inference Infrastructure Partner” by JPMorganChase, with its SN40L and SN50 systems set to support secure on-premise AI inference in banks.
“It’s a big deal that JPMorgan Chase decided to use SambaNova for their inference solutions,” Liang told TechCrunch. “Now it sends a message to the banking industry that they don’t have to rely completely on cloud services. These banks want heterogeneous (infrastructure).”
Liang said JPMorgan’s win was a signal for the broader market. Banks like JP Morgan are now building their own secure infrastructure to run inference on their most sensitive models, which he expects will resonate beyond banks, he said. Liang said businesses and governments are “just beginning their AI journeys,” and that most of the growth so far has been concentrated in technology modelers and advanced labs, leaving “a huge amount of revenue” still on the table.
SambaNova launched the SN40L in September 2023 and will be available in the cloud and on-premises starting in November 2023. Liang said the next-generation SN50, unveiled in February 2026, is expected to begin shipping to customers in the second half of 2026, with SoftBank as its first distribution partner.
Liang said SambaNova’s advantage is “premium inference” that runs the largest models and runs them quickly. Today’s pioneering models span trillions of parameters, and SambaNova said they are purpose-built to handle that scale. The company helps you run trillions of parametric models quickly by putting them on a single rack.
SambaNova sees three types of customers: The first is Sovereign Cloud, where the government funds local partners to build a private cloud. Liang expects SambaNova to participate centrally. The second is NeoCloud. The third is for businesses to build for their own use. In addition to JPMorgan, it also counts Saudi Aramco, Intel and other Japanese companies as customers.
SambaNova will use the proceeds to expand its business and strengthen its supply chain to meet what Liang says is a huge wave of demand. “We are using that capital to secure our supply chain,” he said, explaining that this is essential to fulfill orders and purchase materials the company needs to deliver over the next 12 months.
Other investors participating in this round include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group. New and existing investors also 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.
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