AI chip startup raises $1 billion in funding as investors continue to pour money into companies looking for a challenge Nvidia.
Thanks to funding led by General Atlantic with participation from Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price and Capital Group, SambaNova is now valued at $11 billion.
The latest funding round, announced Wednesday, comes after the startup raised more than $350 million from the following investors earlier this year: intelWe also announced a partnership with
“The inference made it all clear for us, so we knew that as an independent company we had the ability to move quickly and drive business across a wide range of sectors,” SambaNova co-founder and CEO Rodrigo Liang told CNBC at the Raise AI Summit in Paris.
“We are expanding our business very quickly and this capital will allow us to really accelerate the deployment of racks that our customers really want,” he said.
Liang added that the company is strongly considering an IPO in 2027, most likely in the United States.
How SambaNova targets AI inference
SambaNova is one of many startups looking to make waves in the inference chip market. These are semiconductors designed to run large-scale AI models quickly and cost-effectively, and have gained particular attention in the industry as more complex AI agents are introduced.
The company sells its latest chip, the SN50, as part of a server unit that can be deployed in data centers. This is different from the graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture that Nvidia sells and has been essential for training huge AI models.
However, SambaNova also focuses on so-called on-premises deployments, where server units can be located in data centers owned by specific companies. on wednesday, JP Morgan Chase The company said it will deploy SambaNova’s systems for “on-premises inference in demanding enterprise AI workloads.”
“JPMorgan selected SambaNova as the bank’s inference provider,” Liang said.
“For banks and other industries where data is very important, having this infrastructure on-premises and having a model where you can manage private data on this infrastructure and having it all behind your firewall is a really important aspect of running AI in a very secure and private way,” he added.
SambaNova says on-premises inference means faster and more secure AI because it is controlled by the company using it, rather than a third-party cloud provider or AI lab.
Public market investors are bullish on the semiconductor sector, often referred to as the “picks and shovels” of building AI. of PHLX Semiconductor IndexThe stock, which tracks a basket of chip stocks, is up about 80% this year.
However, in the private market, centered on chip companies, there is a growing movement to compete with existing companies.
On Wednesday, Sung-Hyun Park, CEO of South Korean startup Rebellions, exclusively told CNBC that the company is preparing to hold an initial public offering on Kospi in the first or second quarter of 2027.
Last year, Nvidia signed a deal to license technology from inference chip startup Groq.
