Intel backs SambaNova with $350M to challenge Nvidia's grip on AI chip market

Why Is Intel Stock Trading Higher Today? - Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Intel CEO Bets On SambaNova Partnership To Challenge Nvidia's AI Dominance Intel Corp (NASDAQ:INTC) CEO Lip-Bu Tan is deepening ties with AI chip startup SambaNova as it works to strengthen its position against Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) in the fast-growing artificial intelligence market. SambaNova builds chips designed to run generative AI models. Intel Backs SambaNova With Fresh Investment Tan, who chairs SambaNova and first invested in the company eight years ago, is now overseeing Intel's participation in a $350 million funding round for the startup, CNBC reported on Tuesday. According to the report, Intel initially invested in SambaNova in 2019. As part of a new multiyear collaboration announced Tuesday, SambaNova agreed to adopt Intel server processors and graphics cards. Benzinga reached out to Intel's investor relations for their take on the report and is awaiting their response. Competing With Nvidia In The AI Arms Race Nvidia's graphics processing units have long dominated that market, enabling it to become the first company to reach a $4.5 trillion market cap last October. Intel is also developing its own graphics card, Tan said earlier this month at a Cisco event. Intel's stock has climbed 80% over the past year, backed by U.S. government and Nvidia investments. Still, Intel has sought additional partnerships to compete more effectively in AI chips. SambaNova Acquisition Bloomberg reported in January that Intel previously explored acquiring SambaNova for $1.6 billion, but the talks did not result in a deal. SambaNova is promoting its new SN50 chip, which delivers higher performance than Nvidia's B200 GPUs based on Blackwell. Liang said it provides greater computing power at the same price point. SoftBank (OTC:SFTBY), an OpenAI investor and existing SambaNova customer, plans to deploy the SN50. Analysts Cautious Despite Sector Momentum DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria initiated coverage on Intel with a Neutral rating and a $45 price forecast. He acknowledged operational progress that has fueled a recent rally but described Intel as a "show me" story, indicating investors want more unmistakable evidence of sustained execution and turnaround traction. Intel also gained support from renewed optimism across the chip sector after major tech companies outlined aggressive AI spending plans. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives expects Big Tech spending to reach $550-$600 billion in 2026, up from about $380 billion in 2025. The Semiconductor Industry Association reported global chip sales of $791.7 billion in 2025. It forecast 26% growth in 2026, putting the industry on pace to approach $1 trillion in annual revenue as AI and data center demand expand. INTC Price Action: Intel shares were up 5.35% at $45.96 at the time of publication on Tuesday, according to Benzinga Pro data. Photo by Tada Images via Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Why Intel Rallied Today | The Motley Fool

Competitor AMD inked a massive deal with Meta, but Intel also inked an interesting deal with AI start-up SambaNova Intel rose along with the rest of the semiconductor sector, which was generally up strongly today. In particular, Intel may be rising in sympathy with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD +9.12%), which rallied on the back of a massive deal announcement with Meta Platforms (META +0.23%). However, Intel also announced an interesting partnership of its own, which may also be contributing to gains. Today, AMD announced a massive multi-year, six-gigawatt deal for AMD's Helios rack systems to be deployed in Meta's AI infrastructure. For reference, CEO Lisa Su noted that each gigawatt translates to "double-digit billions" in revenue to AMD. As a sweetener for Meta, Meta was also granted a performance-based warrant to purchase 160 million AMD shares, representing about 10% of the company. The deal is practically identical to the deal AMD struck with OpenAI back in October. Some could interpret this as a competitive win for AMD over Intel, but it seems more like Meta buying a second source of GPU-based systems outside Nvidia (NVDA +0.67%). Investors seem to be taking the deal as a signal of massive AI computing demand, which could lift all boats, including Intel's. And with Meta now committing to this enormous amount of compute for Meta, that could free up Intel to sell to other players, given industry supply constraints. Meanwhile, Intel announced its own deal today, disclosing its participation in a $350 million funding round for AI chip start-up SambaNova, along with a new product partnership to integrate SambaNova into Intel's new inference systems. In the press release, Intel said: SambaNova and Intel announced a planned multi-year strategic collaboration to deliver high-performance, cost-efficient AI inference solutions for AI-native companies, model providers, enterprises, and government organizations worldwide, built around Intel Xeon-based infrastructure. In conjunction with the announcement, SambaNova also unveiled its new SN50 inference chip, which it claims is five times faster than "competitive" inference chips, and can run AI inference at "three times lower cost" than GPUs. SambaNova also announced that Softbank (OTC: SFTB.Y) would be the first customer to implement the SN50 in its data centers in Japan. Of note, Softbank invested $2 billion in Intel last summer. The demand for AI compute appears to be accelerating and broadening, with GPUs, memory, and now even CPUs in short supply. Intel itself is severely capacity-constrained, just raised its server CPU prices by 10% to 15%, and is reportedly already sold out for the year. In the agentic inference era, Intel may indeed have a promising new growth area even without leading AI GPUs. But of course, CEO Lip-Bu Tan also recently noted Intel is still going to build AI GPUs as well, and reiterated that in today's press release. Of note, CFO David Zinsner is speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom conference next week on March 4, where he may share more details about this new partnership.