SambaNova Systems has closed the first tranche of its Series F funding round, pulling in $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation. General Atlantic led the round, with a roster of well-known institutional investors also participating. According to TechCrunch, more investors are expected to join within weeks before a second close wraps things up.
The raise comes just five months after SambaNova closed a $350 million Series E in February 2026, the same month it launched its SN50 chip. The company, founded in 2017 and based in Palo Alto, California, had previously been in acquisition talks with Intel at a reported valuation of around $1.6 billion. That number now looks like a distant memory.
When asked whether two consecutive funding rounds signal a commitment to staying independent, CEO and co-founder Rodrigo Liang was careful not to close any doors. “We’re always being approached,” he said. His expectation is that the company’s growth will most likely push it toward “being public at some point,” though he stopped short of a firm commitment either way.
The Intel connection runs deeper than that earlier acquisition rumor. Intel has backed SambaNova since its Series C and participated in this latest round as well. The two companies also signed a multi-year partnership in February to co-develop products around AI inference using Intel’s Xeon chip. Liang described the relationship as giving SambaNova access to Intel’s scale while applying its own chip technology.
The biggest customer announcement alongside the funding is JPMorganChase. The bank has chosen SambaNova as an “inference-infrastructure partner,” with its SN40L and SN50 systems set to run secure, on-premises AI inference at the bank. Liang was direct about what that means for the broader market: “It sends a message to the banking industry that it’s time not to completely depend on cloud services.”
That shift matters because it points to where SambaNova sees its biggest opportunity. Most AI spending so far has flowed to model developers and frontier research labs. Enterprises, governments, and industries like banking are only now starting to build out serious AI infrastructure of their own. Liang called this “a huge amount of revenue” that has yet to be captured.
SambaNova’s pitch is built around running the largest models fast. Today’s frontier models can span trillions of parameters, and the company says it can fit multi-trillion-parameter models onto a single rack. Liang calls this “premium inference,” and it is the core of what SambaNova is selling.
The company targets three types of customers:
- Sovereign clouds – governments funding private, nationally controlled AI infrastructure
- Neoclouds – next-generation cloud providers building AI-first data centers
- Enterprises – large organizations running AI for internal use
Alongside JPMorganChase, SambaNova counts Saudi Aramco, Intel, and several Japanese firms among its customers. SoftBank is also confirmed as the first deployment partner for the SN50 chip, which is due to start shipping in the second half of 2026.
The capital will go toward two things: scaling the business and securing the supply chain. Liang described demand as an “incredible wave” and said the funding is essential to buying materials and fulfilling orders over the next 12 months.
The full list of investors in the round includes:
- General Atlantic (lead)
- Intel
- T. Rowe Price Associates
- BlackRock
- Vista Equity Partners
- Qatar Investment Authority (QIA)
- Battery Ventures
- Capital Group
- Seligman Ventures
- A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Cambium Capital, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, and Volantis
SambaNova’s trajectory over the past year reflects a broader shift in AI infrastructure spending. As enterprises and governments move beyond experimenting with AI and start building private, secure systems, demand for on-premises inference hardware is growing fast. SambaNova is betting it built the right chip at the right time to meet that demand.
