SambaNova Secures $1 Billion in Series F Funding
AI chip company SambaNova has raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation in a first close of its Series F round, led by General Atlantic. The round is expected to see additional investors in the coming weeks, as CEO and co-founder Rodrigo Liang told TechCrunch: ‘In the next few weeks, a few more investors will be coming in, and the second close is likely to finish up.’ This latest round comes roughly five months after SambaNova raised a Series E round alongside a debt facility. The Palo Alto, California-based startup, founded in 2017, had previously been in acquisition talks with Intel at a valuation of roughly $1.6 billion, according to reports.
Asked whether closing Series E and F meant SambaNova had settled on staying independent, Liang was noncommittal, saying the company keeps fielding interest: ‘We’re always being approached.’ The CEO said that while the door is open to such an exit in this dynamic AI market, momentum and growth will most likely drive the company toward ‘being public at some point.’
Deepening Ties with Intel and Major Customer Wins
Partnership with Intel
SambaNova’s ties to Intel, a backer since its Series C and a participant in this latest round, have deepened. Five months ago, the nine-year-old startup announced a multi-year partnership with Intel to support AI inference development based on Intel’s Xeon chip. The two now co-develop products and take them to market together. ‘That gives us a great relationship with them that lets us leverage the scale of Intel with the technology we have,’ Liang said.
JPMorganChase as Inference Infrastructure Partner
Alongside the new funding, SambaNova announced it has been selected by JPMorganChase as an ‘inference-infrastructure partner,’ with its SN40L and SN50 systems set to power secure, on-premises AI inference at the bank. Liang called this a big deal: ‘Having JPMorgan Chase decide they’re going to use SambaNova for their inference solution is a big deal. 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 said the JPMorgan win was a signal to the broader market, as banks ‘of the caliber of JP Morgan’ are now building their own private, secure infrastructure to run inference on their most sensitive models. Enterprises and governments are ‘just starting their AI journey,’ with most growth so far concentrated among tech’s model makers and frontier labs, leaving what he called ‘a huge amount of revenue‘ still on the table.
Technology, Products, and Customer Segments
Next-Generation SN50 and Edge Capabilities
SambaNova launched its SN40L in September 2023, available in the cloud and on-premises from Intel. Its next-generation SN50, unveiled in February 2026, is due to begin shipping to customers in the second half of 2026, with SoftBank as its first deployment partner, Liang noted.
Liang described SambaNova’s edge as ‘premium inference’ — running the largest models and running them fast. Today’s frontier models span trillions of parameters, and SambaNova was built specifically to handle them at that scale. The company fits multi-trillion-parameter models onto a single rack, which helps them run quickly.
Three Customer Types
SambaNova sees three types of customers: sovereign clouds (where governments fund local partners to build private clouds), neoclouds, and enterprises building for their own use. In addition to JPMorgan, its customers include Saudi Aramco, Intel, and Japanese firms.
Use of Funds and Investor Details
SambaNova will use the proceeds to scale the business and shore up its supply chain against what Liang called an incredible wave of demand. ‘We’re using that capital to secure the supply chain,’ he said, describing it as essential to fulfilling orders and buying the materials the company needs to deliver over the next 12 months.
Other investors participating in the 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.