Key Takeaways
- SambaNova Systems is securing $350 million in Series E funding with Intel among the lead investors, joined by Vista Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, and T. Rowe Price.
- A strategic multiyear collaboration has been established, with SambaNova committing to utilize Intel’s server processors and graphics processing units.
- Current Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has served as SambaNova’s board chairman since 2017, having initially backed the company through Walden International venture capital.
- Earlier acquisition discussions valued SambaNova at approximately $1.6 billion, but negotiations ultimately collapsed.
- SambaNova’s latest SN50 processor reportedly delivers five times the computational power per accelerator compared to Nvidia’s B200 GPU architecture.
Intel has committed to participating in a substantial $350 million Series E investment round for artificial intelligence chip developer SambaNova Systems.
The financial commitment accompanies a strategic multiyear agreement whereby SambaNova will integrate Intel’s server processors and graphics processing technology into its infrastructure.
This partnership arrangement emerges following reports that Intel had considered a full acquisition of SambaNova at approximately $1.6 billion, factoring in outstanding debt obligations. However, those acquisition negotiations ultimately broke down, as documented by Bloomberg and Reuters reporting from January.
Intel’s current CEO Lip-Bu Tan maintains deep connections with SambaNova dating back years. His initial investment came through Walden International, his venture capital firm, and he assumed the chairman position at SambaNova in 2017 — a full eight years prior to his appointment as Intel’s chief executive.
An Intel company representative verified that Tan removed himself from deliberations concerning this partnership arrangement.
The Series E financing round also attracted additional new participants including Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, Battery Ventures, and investment accounts managed by T. Rowe Price. Previously committed investors encompass Google’s investment division, Qatar Investment Authority, and Seligman Ventures.
SambaNova’s client roster features prominent names like Hugging Face, Meta, and several leading artificial intelligence research organizations.
Comparing SN50 Performance to Nvidia
SambaNova is aggressively marketing its latest SN50 processor technology. According to company specifications, the chip provides five times greater computational capacity per accelerator unit and quadruple the network throughput compared to earlier generation hardware.
CEO Rodrigo Liang asserts the SN50 surpasses the GPU technology deployed in Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell platform while delivering superior cost-efficiency in terms of computing power per dollar spent. The architecture supports configurations linking up to 256 processors simultaneously.
SoftBank, which already utilizes SambaNova’s technology and maintains significant backing of OpenAI, will pioneer the SN50 deployment — integrating it within next-generation artificial intelligence data facilities across Japan.
Intel’s Strategic Position
Intel’s annual revenues have contracted consistently across four consecutive fiscal years. The semiconductor giant has remained largely sidelined during the artificial intelligence chip surge that propelled Nvidia to become the planet’s highest-valued publicly traded enterprise.
Intel’s equity has surged 75% throughout the past twelve months, powered primarily by federal government funding pledges and a collaborative arrangement involving Nvidia.
During a Cisco corporate gathering earlier this month, Tan disclosed that Intel is developing proprietary graphics card technology.
The SambaNova collaboration provides Intel with crucial access to AI infrastructure clientele as that proprietary product continues through development phases.
Speaking with CNBC, Liang tempered expectations regarding implementation speed. “We’re not doing all this overnight,” he said. “It’s something that we are doing some good planning work to make sure that we’re actually working this out.”
SambaNova is simultaneously pursuing expansion of its proprietary cloud infrastructure for AI model deployment and intends to market processor clusters tailored for enterprise data center installations.
Intel Capital appears among the strategic investors newly participating in this Series E financing round.
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