Key Takeaways
- Intel participates in SambaNova Systems’ $350 million Series E funding round, joined by Vista Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, and T. Rowe Price.
- A strategic multiyear agreement has SambaNova committing to Intel server processors and GPU technology.
- Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan served as SambaNova’s chairman from 2017 and invested early via Walden International venture firm.
- Prior acquisition discussions valued at $1.6 billion ultimately collapsed before this investment partnership emerged.
- SambaNova’s latest SN50 processor reportedly delivers five times greater computational power per accelerator versus Nvidia’s B200 architecture.
Intel has committed capital to AI semiconductor company SambaNova Systems through a $350 million Series E investment round.
The financial backing accompanies a strategic multiyear collaboration that will see SambaNova integrate Intel’s server processors and graphics processing units into its infrastructure.
This partnership emerges after Intel previously pursued a complete acquisition of SambaNova valued at approximately $1.6 billion with debt included. Negotiations ultimately dissolved, as reported by Bloomberg and Reuters sources in January.
Intel’s current CEO Lip-Bu Tan maintains deep connections with SambaNova dating back years. Through Walden International, his venture capital firm, Tan made initial investments in the company and assumed the chairman position in 2017 — nearly a decade before ascending to Intel’s chief executive role.
An Intel representative verified that Tan stepped aside from negotiations surrounding this partnership to avoid conflicts of interest.
The Series E financing includes additional new participants Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, Battery Ventures, and investment accounts managed by T. Rowe Price. Previously established investors comprise Google Ventures, Qatar Investment Authority, and Seligman Ventures.
SambaNova’s client roster features Hugging Face, Meta, and prominent artificial intelligence research organizations.
SN50 Chip Performance Against Nvidia
SambaNova is aggressively marketing its recently launched SN50 processor. According to company specifications, it provides five times greater computational capacity per accelerator and quadruple the network throughput compared to prior generation hardware.
CEO Rodrigo Liang asserts the chip surpasses the GPU performance found in Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell architecture while delivering superior price-to-performance ratios. The architecture supports interconnection of up to 256 processors simultaneously.
SoftBank, both an established SambaNova client and substantial OpenAI investor, will pioneer SN50 deployment within its upcoming generation of AI data facilities across Japan.
Intel’s Strategic Position
Intel’s financial performance shows four consecutive years of declining revenue. The semiconductor giant has remained largely sidelined during the AI acceleration boom that propelled Nvidia to become the world’s highest-valued publicly traded enterprise.
Intel shares have surged 75% during the past twelve months, powered primarily by U.S. government funding commitments and a collaborative arrangement involving Nvidia.
At a recent Cisco conference earlier this month, Tan disclosed that Intel is developing proprietary graphics card technology.
The SambaNova collaboration provides Intel access to AI infrastructure customers during the development phase of its internal GPU products.
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 simultaneously plans to broaden its proprietary cloud platform for AI model execution and intends to market processor clusters designed for enterprise data center deployment.
Intel Capital appears among the strategic investors participating in this Series E financing round.
