SambaNova Systems, an AI chip company, has raised $1 billion（約1600億円） at an $11 billion（約1.8兆円） valuation in its Series F funding round led by General Atlantic. The funding marks momentum for the company as it expands beyond chip design into enterprise AI infrastructure; JPMorgan Chase has selected SambaNova as an inference partner to run secure, on-premises AI systems, signaling a broader shift among banks and enterprises toward private AI infrastructure rather than relying solely on cloud providers.
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AI chip maker SambaNova Systems raised $1 billion（約1600億円） in a first close of its Series F round, led by General Atlantic, at an $11 billion（約1.8兆円） valuation. CEO Rodrigo Liang said more investors will join in coming weeks for a second close. The round comes five months after the company's February Series E and the unveiling of its SN50 chip.
Why it matters
SambaNova has won JPMorgan Chase as an "inference-infrastructure partner," with the bank set to use the company's SN40L and SN50 systems for secure, on-premises AI inference. Liang framed this as a signal that banks and enterprises are building private infrastructure for sensitive AI work rather than relying entirely on cloud services—a shift he expects will open a large market beyond tech companies.
What to watch
SambaNova's SN50 is due to begin shipping to customers in the second half of 2026, with SoftBank as its first deployment partner. The company plans to use the $1 billion（約1600億円） to scale operations and secure its supply chain to meet what Liang called "an incredible wave of demand" over the next 12 months.
SambaNova's $1 billion（約1600億円） Series F, coming just five months after its $350 million（約560億円） Series E in February, reflects strong investor confidence in the company's shift from chip design toward full-stack enterprise AI infrastructure. The timing aligns with the unveiling of its SN50 chip in February and the announcement of a multi-year partnership with Intel to co-develop and bring AI inference products to market together. Intel, which has backed SambaNova since its Series C, is participating in this latest round, deepening a relationship that positions both companies to address demand for on-premises AI systems.
The JPMorgan Chase partnership is particularly significant as a market signal. Rather than relying on hyperscalers' cloud services, the bank is building its own private infrastructure for inference—the step where an AI produces an answer to a user's question. CEO Liang frames this as the start of a broader trend: enterprises and governments "just starting their AI journey" are now building heterogeneous (mixed) infrastructure to run sensitive models securely in-house. He identifies three customer segments—sovereign clouds (government-funded private clouds), neoclouds (private infrastructure providers), and enterprises building for their own use—and expects "a huge amount of revenue" beyond today's concentration among frontier AI labs and model makers.
SambaNova's focus on what it calls "premium inference" running the largest models—today's frontier models span trillions of parameters—positions it for this shift. The company's design allows multi-trillion-parameter models to run on a single rack, enabling fast inference at scale. With supply-chain constraints named as a key use of the new capital, the company appears to be betting that demand will outpace availability in the coming 12 months. The staggered close structure (first close now, second close expected in coming weeks) and the roster of new and existing investors—including BlackRock, Vista Equity Partners, and Qatar Investment Authority—underscore broad institutional appetite for enterprise AI infrastructure plays.
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