AI Chip Startup SambaNova Valued at $11 Billion After $1 Billion Funding Round

AI chip startup SambaNova announced on Wednesday it has raised $1 billion in a late-stage funding round, achieving a post-money valuation of $11 billion. The Series F round was led by General Atlantic and included significant investments from Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group, alongside other new and existing investors like BlackRock and the Qatar Investment Authority.

The company plans to utilize the new capital to expand its production capacity, scale its worldwide deployments, and continue investing in its full-stack AI infrastructure, encompassing chips, systems, and software. SambaNova focuses on custom chips, hardware systems, and cloud services specifically designed for inference, the process of responding to user queries with AI models.

In a significant development, SambaNova revealed that JPMorgan Chase has selected it as an inference infrastructure partner. The bank will deploy SambaNova's SN40 and SN50 systems for its AI inference needs. This partnership highlights the growing demand for specialized AI hardware and services in the financial sector.

This latest funding round follows a $350 million raise in February, which supported the expansion of its SN50 AI chip. That earlier period also saw a partnership with Intel, involving a $35 million Intel investment in SambaNova, aimed at delivering cost-effective inference solutions for AI-native companies. While acquisition talks between Intel and SambaNova stalled, Intel had previously planned further investment.