Palo Alto, California-based AI chip company SambaNova Systems said it raised $1 billion in the first close of its Series F round at an $11 billion valuation. The round was led by General Atlantic, and CEO and co-founder Rodrigo Liang told TechCrunch that additional investors are expected to join in the coming weeks as a second close completes.
Context and recent history
The financing comes roughly five months after SambaNova unveiled its SN50 chip and following a $350 million Series E round announced in February. Bloomberg reported in December that SambaNova had previously held acquisition talks with Intel that valued the company at about $1.6 billion.
When asked whether completing the Series E and F rounds signaled the company would remain independent, Liang did not give a firm commitment, saying SambaNova continues to receive acquisition interest but that momentum and growth are likely to push the company toward “being public at some point.”
Deepening partnership with Intel
Intel, a backer since SambaNova’s Series C and a participant in the latest round, has deepened its collaboration with the startup. Five months ago the two companies announced a multi-year partnership to support AI inference development based on Intel’s Xeon processors. They now co-develop products and bring them to market together. Liang said the relationship allows SambaNova to leverage Intel’s scale alongside its own technology.
JPMorgan Chase selects SambaNova for on-premises inference
Alongside the new funding, SambaNova said JPMorgan Chase selected it as an “inference-infrastructure partner.” The bank will use SambaNova’s SN40L and SN50 systems to run secure, on-premises AI inference. Liang described the win as significant for the banking sector, signaling a shift away from exclusive dependence on cloud services and toward heterogeneous infrastructure.
Liang argued that institutions of JPMorgan’s caliber are building private, secure infrastructure to run inference on their most sensitive models—a trend he expects to extend beyond banking to enterprises and governments that are still early in their AI adoption.
Products, customers, and market positioning
SambaNova launched the SN40L in September 2023, with on-premises availability from November 2023. The SN50, introduced in February 2026, is scheduled to begin shipping to customers in the second half of 2026, with SoftBank named as the first deployment partner.
The company positions itself around “premium inference” for very large models. Liang said modern frontier models span trillions of parameters and that SambaNova’s architecture was designed to handle them at scale, fitting multi-trillion-parameter models into a single rack to enable fast execution.
SambaNova categorizes customers into three groups: sovereign clouds (where governments fund local partners to build private clouds), neoclouds, and enterprises building their own infrastructure. In addition to JPMorgan, it listed Saudi Aramco, Intel, and several Japanese firms among its customers.
Use of proceeds and supply chain priorities
Liang said the new capital will be used to scale operations and secure the supply chain amid what he described as an “incredible wave of demand.” He emphasized that securing the supply chain is essential to fulfilling orders and procuring the materials needed over the next 12 months.
Other investors
Other participants in the round include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group. New and existing investors that joined include A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, BlackRock, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Vista Equity Partners, and Volantis.
Conclusion
Founded in 2017, SambaNova is using the $1 billion first close and deepening partnerships with Intel and JPMorgan Chase to strengthen its position in on-premises AI inference and large-model deployment. The company says the funding will support scaling and supply-chain resilience as it meets growing demand.
