SambaNova Systems, an AI chip enterprise, has secured $1 billion at a valuation of $11 billion during the initial close of its Series F round, spearheaded by General Atlantic, with additional investors anticipated to come aboard shortly.

“In the upcoming weeks, a few additional investors will be entering, and the second close is expected to wrap up soon,” stated Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova, in an interview with TechCrunch.

This recent funding round arrives approximately five months after the startup, based in Palo Alto, California, introduced its SN50 chip and a $350 million Series E round in February. SambaNova was also reportedly in discussions with Intel regarding a potential acquisition that would value the company at around $1.6 billion, as per a December report from Bloomberg News.

When asked if the closure of its Series E and F rounds indicated that SambaNova, which was established in 2017, intended to remain independent, Liang was ambiguous. He noted that the company continues to receive interest. “We’re consistently approached.” The possibility of such an exit remains open in this dynamic AI landscape, according to the CEO, but growth and momentum will likely steer the company toward “going public at some point.”

SambaNova’s relationship with Intel, a supporter since its Series C and a participant in this latest funding round, has strengthened. Five months ago, the nine-year-old startup announced a multi-year collaboration with Intel aimed at enhancing AI inference development utilizing Intel’s Xeon chip. The two companies now co-develop products and market them together. “This establishes a strong connection with them that allows us to leverage Intel’s scale alongside our technology,” Liang remarked.

Along with the new funding, SambaNova announced it has been chosen by JPMorganChase as an “inference-infrastructure partner,” with its SN40L and SN50 systems set to facilitate secure, on-premises AI inference at the financial institution.

“Having JPMorgan Chase select SambaNova for their inference solution is significant,” Liang conveyed to TechCrunch. “It conveys a strong message to the banking sector that dependence on cloud services should not be absolute. These banks prefer heterogeneous [infrastructure].”

Liang indicated that the JPMorgan win signifies a trend in the wider market. Financial institutions “of JPMorgan’s stature” are now establishing their own private and secure infrastructure to execute inference on their most sensitive models, a trend he anticipates will extend beyond banking. He noted that enterprises and governments are “just beginning their AI journey,” with much of the growth thus far focused on model makers and frontier labs in tech, leaving what he termed “a tremendous revenue opportunity” still available.

SambaNova rolled out its SN40L in September 2023, available in the cloud, with on-premises availability starting November 2023. Its new-generation SN50, launched in February 2026, is expected to start delivering to customers in the latter half of 2026, with SoftBank as its initial deployment partner, Liang added.

Liang highlighted SambaNova’s advantage as “premium inference” enabling rapid execution of the largest models. Today’s frontier models encompass trillions of parameters, and he shared that SambaNova was specifically engineered to manage them at such a scale. The company places multi-trillion-parameter models on a single rack, facilitating efficient operation.

SambaNova identifies three categories of customers. The first includes sovereign clouds, where governments finance local partners to construct private clouds, a sector where Liang expects SambaNova to play a central role. The second category is neoclouds. The third consists of enterprises developing solutions for their internal use. Besides JPMorgan, they also identify Saudi Aramco, Intel, and various Japanese firms as clients.

SambaNova plans to utilize the funds to expand its operations and fortify its supply chain in response to what Liang described as an astonishing surge in demand. “We’re applying that capital to safeguard the supply chain,” he explained, emphasizing its importance to fulfilling orders and acquiring the necessary materials for the next 12 months.

Other investors joining the round include Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group. Both new and existing investors participated, including A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, BlackRock, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Vista Equity Partners, and Volantis.