SambaNova raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation the same day JPMorgan Chase picked it to run inference, the workload where trained AI models answer user queries, on its SN40 and SN50 inference systems.
JPMorgan Chase has selected SambaNova as an inference infrastructure partner, deploying the company's SN40 and SN50 systems. SambaNova closed a $1 billion Series F at an $11 billion post-money valuation on the same day.
Inference is the workload that runs after a model has already been trained: every time a chatbot, fraud-detection system, or internal copilot produces an answer, it is calling on inference hardware to do the math. General-purpose GPUs handle it. Specialized chips like SambaNova's are built to do that one job faster and cheaper, and the category has drawn dozens of inference-focused startups over the past two years as enterprises look to control the cost of running models in production. A public deployment at a top-tier U.S. bank is the kind of reference account the inference-chip field has been waiting for.
General Atlantic led the Series F, with significant participation from Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Capital Group, according to a Reuters report carried by Yahoo Finance. Other named investors include A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, BlackRock-managed funds and accounts, Intel Capital, and the Qatar Investment Authority. CNBC and The Next Web carried the same terms.
SambaNova said the proceeds will go toward capacity expansion, global deployment scaling, and continued investment across chips, systems, software, and full-stack AI infrastructure. The company did not respond to questions about Intel Capital's current stake or its contribution to the round.
A top-tier bank signing on as an inference infrastructure partner is a different signal than another chip vendor closing a round. It commits production traffic, internal data, and regulatory scrutiny to a vendor in a way that late-stage capital alone does not.
The Series F extends a busy funding stretch for the Palo Alto-based company. In February 2026, SambaNova raised $350 million targeted at SN50 chip expansion, and an Intel partnership announced that month included roughly $35 million aimed at cheap inference for AI-native companies. Reuters reported in April that Intel had planned a further $15 million that would have lifted its stake to roughly 9% before the deal stalled ahead of U.S. antitrust review. SambaNova was last valued above $5 billion in an April 2021 $676 million round.
The deployment scale, which neither JPMorgan nor SambaNova has disclosed, will be the next data point investors look for. A flagship bank account, undisclosed or not, is the customer signal a late-stage round of this size is built around. The watch items are whether other regulated buyers, insurers, asset managers, payments networks, follow with deployment announcements of their own, and whether SambaNova's $11 billion paper valuation becomes a benchmark other specialized inference vendors can clear at the next funding cycle.