SambaNova raises $1 billion Series F first close at an $11 billion valuation

SambaNova Systems announced on July 8, 2026, at the RAISE conference in Paris, that it has completed the first close of $1 billion in strategic financing as part of a Series F round, pushing its valuation to $11 billion post-money.

What's new

SambaNova's own announcement states the company "today announced it has completed the first close of $1 billion in strategic financing as part of a Series F round, valuing the company at $11 billion post money." General Atlantic led the round, with significant investment from Seligman Ventures and T. Rowe Price Associates. A long list of new and existing investors joined, including funds managed by BlackRock, Intel Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, Vista Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, and Capital Group.

The round isn't fully closed — SambaNova and General Atlantic describe this as a "first close," with a second close expected to bring in additional investors in the coming weeks.

Alongside the funding, SambaNova disclosed a new enterprise customer win: JPMorganChase has selected SambaNova as an inference infrastructure partner, deploying the company's SN40 and SN50 RDU systems to power secure, on-premises AI inference for the bank. SambaNova says the new capital will go toward expanding manufacturing and deployment capacity, accelerating product development, and scaling deployments for enterprises, neoclouds, sovereign AI programs, and service providers.

CEO and co-founder Rodrigo Liang framed the round around inference economics: "SambaNova's $11 billion valuation highlights the central role that fast inference now plays in the enterprise AI stack." General Atlantic's Martín Escobari added that the firm sees "deep technical innovation" driving "growing commercial momentum while demand for inference is accelerating well ahead of supply."

Context

This is SambaNova's second mega-round in under six months — the company raised $350 million-plus in February 2026 alongside the launch of its SN50 RDU chip and an Intel collaboration. The pace reflects intense investor appetite for alternatives to Nvidia in AI inference infrastructure, a category that also includes Cerebras, Groq, and Together AI, all of which have raised large rounds over the past year as enterprises look to diversify away from GPU supply constraints and Nvidia's pricing power.

The JPMorganChase deployment is notable context: on-premises inference for a systemically important bank is a different sales motion than selling to cloud-native AI startups, and it signals SambaNova is winning validation from risk-averse, security-conscious enterprise buyers — not just AI-native customers.

Why it matters

At an $11 billion valuation, SambaNova is now one of the most highly valued independent AI chip companies outside Nvidia and AMD, in a market where custom silicon and inference-optimized architectures are increasingly seen as the way enterprises escape GPU scarcity and cost. The round size — and the roster of blue-chip investors including BlackRock, Qatar Investment Authority, and Vista — signals institutional capital is betting inference workloads, not just training, will be where the next wave of AI infrastructure spending concentrates.

A bank the size of JPMorganChase choosing on-prem SambaNova hardware over cloud-based inference from a hyperscaler is also a signal worth watching: regulated industries with strict data-residency and security requirements are a distinct, high-value market segment that pure-play cloud AI providers can't always serve, and SambaNova's win there could become a reference case other financial institutions point to when evaluating on-prem AI infrastructure vendors.