SambaNova, a nine-year-old AI inference chip startup, is set to raise between $800M and $1B at a valuation of around $10B, roughly five times its worth just four months ago, with private equity firm General Atlantic in talks to lead the round, according to The Information. The company makes chips that aim to run AI models faster and at a fraction of the power of Nvidia's GPUs, positioning itself in the “premium inference” market and increasingly pitching its hardware as a complement to Nvidia rather than a direct rival. The raise comes amid a frenzy of AI-chip financing even as Nvidia has grown its market share to 74%, with rivals like the newly public Cerebras and Nvidia-absorbed Groq also vying for share. SambaNova counts Intel, which owns a 9% stake, as a customer and recently landed a $3.5B revenue commitment tied to a Vista Equity cloud venture.
