SambaNova raises $1B at $11B valuation in Series F first close

SambaNova secures $1 billion in Series F opening

AI chip company SambaNova Systems has closed the first tranche of its Series F funding round, raising $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation with General Atlantic leading the investment. CEO and co-founder Rodrigo Liang told TechCrunch that additional investors will join in a second close expected within weeks.

The Palo Alto-based company, founded in 2017, raised $350 million in Series E just five months ago in February when it unveiled its SN50 chip. The dramatic valuation jump comes despite SambaNova having been in acquisition discussions with Intel late last year at a reported $1.6 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg News.

Liang acknowledged the company continues to field acquisition interest but suggested an eventual public offering is the more likely path given current momentum. "We're always being approached," he said, while noting that growth trajectory points toward "being public at some point."

JPMorgan Chase validates enterprise inference strategy

Alongside the funding announcement, SambaNova revealed it has been selected by JPMorgan Chase as an inference infrastructure partner. The bank will deploy SambaNova's SN40L and SN50 systems for secure, on-premises AI inference.

Liang characterized the JPMorgan win as a market signal that major financial institutions are moving away from complete cloud dependence. "These banks want heterogeneous [infrastructure]," he said, predicting the approach will resonate beyond banking as enterprises and governments accelerate their AI deployments.

The CEO positioned most AI growth to date as concentrated among model makers and frontier labs, leaving what he described as "a huge amount of revenue" available as enterprises build out their own infrastructure.

Intel partnership deepens amid supply chain focus

Intel, a SambaNova backer since Series C, participated in this latest round and has expanded its relationship with the startup. The companies announced a multi-year partnership five months ago to co-develop AI inference products based on Intel's Xeon chip and bring them to market jointly.

"That gives us a great relationship with them that lets us leverage the scale of Intel with the technology we have," Liang said.

SambaNova will direct the new capital primarily toward securing its supply chain against what Liang called "an incredible wave of demand." The company needs to lock in materials and components to fulfill orders over the next 12 months.

Product roadmap and customer base

SambaNova launched its SN40L chip in September 2023, making it available in cloud environments and on-premises starting November 2023. The next-generation SN50, unveiled in February, is scheduled to begin shipping in the second half of 2026, with SoftBank as the first deployment partner.

The company positions itself in "premium inference" for the largest models, fitting multi-trillion-parameter models onto single racks for faster processing. Beyond JPMorgan Chase, SambaNova counts Saudi Aramco, Intel, and several Japanese firms among its customers.

Liang outlined three customer categories: sovereign clouds where governments fund local partners to build private infrastructure, neoclouds, and enterprises building for internal use.

Other investors in the round include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Capital Group, BlackRock, Qatar Investment Authority, Vista Equity Partners, and Battery Ventures, among others.

These details were first reported by TechCrunch.

Why it matters

SambaNova's valuation surge and JPMorgan partnership signal a shift in enterprise AI infrastructure strategy. Major institutions are moving inference workloads on-premises rather than relying exclusively on cloud providers, creating opportunities for specialized chip companies. The willingness of a systemically important bank to deploy a startup's hardware for sensitive AI workloads validates the technical approach and could accelerate adoption across regulated industries where data sovereignty and security requirements make public cloud solutions less attractive.