On July 8, AI chip startup SambaNova announced it has raised $1 billion in a late-stage Series F funding round led by General Atlantic, bringing its post-money valuation to $11 billion. The company specializes in custom chips, hardware systems, and cloud services designed for AI inference—the process by which AI models respond to user queries.

The funding round saw significant participation from investors including Seligman Ventures, A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, BlackRock-managed funds, Intel Capital, and the Qatar Investment Authority. SambaNova plans to use the proceeds to expand capacity, scale deployments globally, and continue investing in chips, systems, software, and full-stack AI infrastructure.

SambaNova also revealed that JPMorgan Chase has selected it as an inference infrastructure partner, deploying its SN40 and SN50 systems for AI inference tasks.

Earlier in February, SambaNova raised $350 million to support the expansion of its SN50 AI chip and formed a partnership with Intel to provide affordable inference solutions for AI-native companies. This partnership included a $35 million investment from Intel, which received U.S. antitrust clearance in May after acquisition talks stalled. Additionally, a Reuters review in April indicated Intel planned to invest another $15 million, potentially increasing its ownership stake in SambaNova to 9%.

In April 2021, SambaNova raised $676 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group's Vision Fund 2, which valued the company at over $5 billion.

Sources