This AI chipmaker has raised $1B at $11B valuation
What's the story
SambaNova Systems, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) chip company, has raised $1 billion in its Series F funding round. The investment was led by General Atlantic and values the company at $11 billion. This is the first close of the Series F round with more investors expected to join soon. Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova, said additional investors are likely to come in over the next few weeks.
Company evolution
Funding round comes amid Intel acquisition talks
This funding round comes five months after SambaNova launched its SN50 chip and raised $350 million in Series E funding. The company was also in talks with Intel for an acquisition deal worth about $1.6 billion, Bloomberg reported in December. When asked if the completion of its Series E and F rounds indicated that SambaNova had decided to remain independent, Liang was noncommittal but said the company continues to receive interest from potential acquirers.
Strategic alliances
Ongoing partnership with Intel strengthened
SambaNova, which was founded in 2017, has strengthened its ties with Intel. The latter has been a backer since its Series C funding round and participated in this latest round as well. Five months ago, SambaNova announced a multi-year partnership with Intel to develop AI inference based on the latter's Xeon chip. Now, the two companies co-develop products and take them to market together.
Infrastructure partnership
JPMorgan selects SambaNova as 'inference-infrastructure partner'
Along with the new funding, SambaNova has been chosen by JPMorganChase as an "inference-infrastructure partner." Its SN40L and SN50 systems will power secure, on-premises AI inference at the bank. Liang said this decision by JPMorganChase is a major development that shows the banking industry should not rely entirely on cloud services and instead opt for heterogeneous infrastructure.