SambaNova Systems, the Intel-backed AI chip startup, is reported in June 2026 to be raising up to $1 billion at a valuation of roughly $10 billion, about a fivefold jump from its previous round just four months earlier.
June 2026 · SambaNova Systems
Inference Chip Startup Eyes $10B Valuation — a 5× Leap in Four Months
The Intel-backed maker of Reconfigurable Dataflow Units is reported to be raising up to $1 billion, pitching low-cost inference chips as a complement to Nvidia GPUs.
Valuation in four months
Feb 2026Series E ($350M+)
→
June 2026reported raise (up to $1B)
Heights drawn to scale — roughly a fivefold jump in valuation.
~$1B
target raise, possibly led by General Atlantic
198
tokens/sec per user on DeepSeek-R1 671B (16 SN40L chips)
2017
founded by Stanford professors and others
SN40L vs SN50 — generational jump
SN40L · 4th gen
Baseline compute
16 chips per air-cooled rack
Large-scale inference
SN50 · 5th gen · Feb 2026
~5× compute, 4× network bandwidth vs SN40
Up to 256 chips per system
Agentic AI — up to 10T params, 10M-token context
Compute scale-up (relative)
The fifth-generation SN50 claims roughly five times the compute of SN40, built for agentic AI workloads.
What's drawing investors
Lower chip count, power and total cost of ownership vs GPUs
Fast token generation praised by developers (Llama 405B, CrewAI)
Inference is much of the cost of running AI
Open questions
Pricing not public — only "lower than GPUs"
Few detailed large-scale production reviews
Reported management shifts and go-to-market delays
Raise not directly confirmed by the company
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