SambaNova Systems raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation in the first close of its Series F round, led by General Atlantic, and announced JPMorgan Chase as an inference partner. The company continues to field acquisition interest.
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AI chip company SambaNova Systems raised $1 billion in the first tranche of its Series F round, reaching an $11 billion valuation, and announced JPMorgan Chase as its inference infrastructure partner. CEO Rodrigo Liang said banks are moving from full reliance on cloud services to private infrastructure for sensitive AI workloads.
SambaNova Systems raised $1 billion in the first tranche of its Series F round, reaching an $11 billion valuation, led by General Atlantic. CEO Rodrigo Liang said more investors will join in the coming weeks to complete a second close. This round comes only about five months after its $350 million Series E and SN50 chip announcement in February.
Although SambaNova has received acquisition interest (according to a December 2025 Bloomberg report, Intel considered acquiring it for about $1.6 billion), Liang said the company continues to receive acquisition interest but its growth momentum makes an eventual IPO more likely than a sale. Intel, an investor since Series C, participated in this round, and the two have deepened their collaboration to jointly develop and bring AI inference products to market.
Other investors in this round include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Capital Group, BlackRock, and Qatar Investment Authority, among others.
SambaNova announced it was selected by JPMorgan Chase as its inference infrastructure partner, deploying its SN40L and SN50 systems for secure, on-premises AI inference. Liang said this partnership sends a signal to the banking industry: they should not fully rely on cloud services; banks need heterogeneous infrastructure.
Liang expects that banks of JPMorgan's caliber will build private secure infrastructure to run inference on the most sensitive models, and this trend will extend beyond banking to enterprises and governments. He believes most AI growth is currently concentrated among model makers and frontier labs, while enterprises and governments are just beginning their AI journey, leaving significant revenue potential.
SambaNova focuses on 'high-end inference,' capable of efficiently running multi-trillion-parameter frontier models and fitting these models onto a single rack for fast operation. Its SN40L was announced in September 2023, and the SN50 in February 2026, with shipments expected in the second half of 2026, with SoftBank as the first deployment partner.
The company's customers fall into three categories: sovereign clouds (government-funded local partners building private clouds), neoclouds, and enterprises building their own AI. Besides JPMorgan, customers include Saudi Aramco, Intel, and several Japanese companies.
Liang said the new funds will be used to expand the business and secure the supply chain to meet an 'incredible wave of demand.' He emphasized that securing the supply chain is critical to fulfilling orders and procuring necessary materials over the next 12 months.
This article is based on reports from The AI Insider and TechCrunch, both of which are primary sources directly interviewing CEO Rodrigo Liang. All numbers, partnerships, and timelines come from direct quotes or explicit statements in the reports. No external knowledge was introduced.
SambaNova's $1 billion funding and JPMorgan partnership signal a shift in AI inference infrastructure from cloud services to private deployment, especially in highly sensitive industries. Leveraging its high-end inference capabilities and Intel partnership, the company aims to secure a key position in the enterprise and sovereign cloud markets.
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