SambaNova Raises $1 Billion at $11 Billion Valuation

AI chip company SambaNova Systems has raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation, led by General Atlantic, in a first close of its Series F round.

This latest funding round comes roughly five months after the Palo Alto, California-based startup company unveiled its SN50 chip, alongside a $350 million Series E in February. SambaNova had also been in acquisition talks with Intel, a deal valuing it at roughly $1.6 billion, according to a December report from Bloomberg News.

SambaNova's Relationship with Intel Deepens

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," said Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova.

JPMorgan Chase Selects SambaNova as Inference-Infrastructure Partner

Alongside the new funding, SambaNova said 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.

• "Having JPMorgan Chase decide they're going to use SambaNova for their inference solution is a big deal," Liang told TechCrunch. "It sends a message to the banking industry that it's time not to completely depend on cloud services. These banks want heterogeneous [infrastructure]."

SambaNova's Edge in the Market

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.

SambaNova's Customers and Future Plans

SambaNova sees three types of customers. The first is sovereign clouds, where governments fund local partners to build private clouds, a push Liang expects SambaNova to figure centrally in. The second is neoclouds. The third is enterprises building for their own use.

• In addition to JPMorgan, it also names Saudi Aramco, Intel, and other Japanese firms as customers.

Using the Proceeds

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

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.