AI chip maker SambaNova raises $1B to $11B valuation, 5 months after last mega round

AI chip company SambaNova Systems has raised $1 billion in an $11 billion round led by General Atlantic, in the first close of its Series F round, with more investors expected to join soon.

“In the next few weeks, a few more investors will come in, and the second closing is likely to end,” Rodrigo Liang, CEO and founder of SambaNova, told TechCrunch.

The latest round comes about five months after the Palo Alto, California-based startup unveiled its SN50 chip, along with a $350 million Series E in February. SambaNova is also in acquisition talks with Intel, a deal worth about $1.6 billion, according to a December report from Bloomberg News.

Asked if closing the Series E and F rounds meant that SambaNova, which was founded in 2017, had settled into remaining independent, Liang was noncommittal. He said the company continues to pay interest. “It’s always touched.” The door is open to such an exit in this dynamic AI market, the CEO said, but momentum and growth will lead the company to “go public at some point.”

SambaNova’s ties to Intel, a backer since Series C and a participant in this latest round, run deep. Five months ago, the nine-year-old startup announced a multi-year partnership with Intel to support AI 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 allows us to leverage Intel’s scale with the technology that we have,” Liang said.

Alongside the new funding, SambaNova said it has been selected by JPMorganChase as an “infrastructure partner,” with its SN40L and SN50 systems set up for energy security, AI-aware on-premises banking.

“Having JPMorgan Chase decide to use SambaNova for their solution is a big deal,” Liang told TechCrunch. “It sends a message to the banking industry that it’s time to not rely entirely on cloud services. These banks want to diversify. [infrastructure].”

Liang said JPMorgan’s win is a signal to the broader market. Banks “at the level of JP Morgan” are now building their own private, secure infrastructure to run their most critical models, he said, a move he expects to see outside banks. Businesses and governments are “just beginning their AI journey,” Liang continued, with much of the growth so far focused on technology modelers and frontier labs, leaving what he called “a huge amount of revenue” on the table.

SambaNova launched its SN40L in September 2023, available in the cloud, and on premises from November 2023. Its next generation SN50, launched in February 2026, will start shipping to customers in the second half of 2026, SoftBank as the first known partner, Liang.

Liang said SambaNova’s edge is “premium inference” that uses very large models and runs them quickly. Today’s models run on billions of parameters, and he said the SambaNova was specifically designed to handle that scale. The company puts billions of parameter models in a single rack that helps them run faster.

SambaNova recognizes three types of customers. The first is private clouds, where governments fund local partners to build private clouds, and Liang expects SambaNova to step into the middle. The second is neoclouds. The third is self-created businesses. In addition to JPMorgan, it also counts Saudi Aramco, Intel, and other Japanese companies as clients.

SambaNova will use the proceeds to grow the business and strengthen its supply chain for what Liang called a phenomenal wave of demand. “We’re using that money to protect the supply chain,” he said, describing it as an important factor in filling orders and purchasing supplies the company must deliver in 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.