SambaNova Secures $1 Billion at $11 Billion Valuation as Enterprise Inference Demand Surges

Research notes

SambaNova raised $1B at $11B valuation in Series F first close, led by General Atlantic
CEO Rodrigo Liang confirmed more investors expected to join in next few weeks for second close
Raised $350M Series E in February 2026 alongside SN50 chip unveiling
Intel had engaged in acquisition talks valued at ~$1.6B per Bloomberg December 2025 report
JPMorganChase selected SambaNova as inference-infrastructure partner; SN40L and SN50 systems to power secure on-prem AI inference
SN40L launched September 2023, available cloud and on-premises from November 2023
SN50 unveiled February 2026, shipping to customers H2 2026 with SoftBank as first deployment partner
Existing investors include Intel Capital; company and Intel deepened ties after Series C
SambaNova is building heterogeneous infrastructure for enterprise inference; CEO expects trend to spread beyond banking

Confirms $1B first close at $11B post-money valuation led by General Atlantic
Other investors: Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Capital Group, A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, BlackRock, Cambium Capital, Intel Capital, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Vista Equity Partners, Volantis
JPMorganChase deploying SN40 and SN50 systems for secure on-prem AI inference
Quote from Martín Escobari (General Atlantic): "inference has become foundational to enterprise and industry transformation"
Quote from Umesh Padval (Seligman Ventures): RDU architecture uniquely positioned to lower cost per token at scale
SN50 unveiled earlier in 2026 with $350M+ raise and Intel collaboration
Company will use proceeds to expand capacity, accelerate product innovation, scale deployments for enterprises, neo-clouds, sovereign AI customers

SambaNova explored sale in October 2025 after fundraising stalled; valuation dropped from $5B (2021) to ~$4B perceived
Founded 2017 by Rodrigo Liang, Kunle Olukotun, Christopher Ré
Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) architecture with three-tier memory hierarchy; benchmarks showed 16 RDUs processing 198–255 tokens/sec on DeepSeek-R1 671B
SN40L launched September 2023; supports models twice the size of advanced ChatGPT versions
Claims sixfold faster training and 10x performance vs. Nvidia A100 on certain workloads
Enterprise clients include U.S. DoE labs (Oak Ridge, Livermore), OTP Bank, Accenture, Aramco, SoftBank, NetApp, RIKEN
Raised $2.17B across six rounds; investors include BlackRock, GIC, GV, Intel Capital, Temasek, Walden International, Samsung Catalyst Fund
In March 2025 launched "deep research" agent framework with CrewAI Inc.
Focus shifted toward inference optimization, multilingual modeling after GenAI surge

$1B Series F first close at $11B post-money valuation (TechCrunch, General Atlantic)
Led by General Atlantic; Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Capital Group participating
Second close expected in coming weeks; Rodrigo Liang confirms "a few more investors" joining
Valuation spikes from $1.6B rumored acquisition price just months prior (TechCrunch, TechStartups)

December 2025 rumor of Intel acquisition at ~$1.6B (TechCrunch)
Founder noncommittal on exit path but notes doors open to acquisition; growth likely drives toward public listing
Company fielding interest daily; CEO says momentum and growth drive strategy (TechCrunch)

SN40L launched September 2023; cloud + on-prem availability November 2023 (TechCrunch)
SN50 unveiled February 2026 with $350M Series E; shipping H2 2026, SoftBank first deployment (TechCrunch)
RDU architecture handles multi-trillion-parameter models on single rack (TechCrunch, TechStartups)
Benchmarks show 16 RDUs process 198–255 tokens/sec on DeepSeek-R1 671B, occasionally outperforming Nvidia (TechStartups)
Company claims 6x faster training and 10x performance gains vs. A100 on specific workloads (TechStartups)

JPMorganChase selects SambaNova as inference-infrastructure partner for secure on-prem inference (TechCrunch, General Atlantic)
Quote from Darrin Alves, JPMorganChase CIO on performance, control, and reliability requirements (General Atlantic)
Founder notes banks building private infrastructure for sensitive model inference; trend expected beyond finance (TechCrunch)
Other customers: Saudi Aramco, Intel, Japanese firms (TechCrunch); DoE labs, OTP Bank, Accenture, RIKEN (TechStartups)

Intel backed SambaNova since Series C; co-develop products and bring to market together (TechCrunch)
Multi-year partnership announced five months ago for AI inference on Intel Xeon platform (General Atlantic)
CEO explains partnership gives leverage of Intel scale with SambaNova tech advantage (TechCrunch)

Company repositioning around premium inference, agentic AI, and enterprise deployment (General Atlantic)
CEO says demand accelerating well ahead of supply; this round supports scaling capacity (TechCrunch, General Atlantic)
Founder sees huge revenue still untapped beyond model makers and frontier labs (TechCrunch)
Enterprise adoption expected to grow in banking, government, healthcare, energy sectors (TechCrunch, TechStartups)

Proceeds to expand capacity, accelerate product innovation, scale deployments (General Atlantic)
Critical use of capital: securing supply chain to fulfill orders and buy materials for next 12 months (TechCrunch)
Will grow customer programs and invest across chips, systems, software, full-stack AI infrastructure (General Atlantic)

Research notes