Vista Equity Partners and Intel lead $350M funding round for AI chip startup SambaNova Systems

Exclusive: Vista Equity Partners and Intel to lead investment in AI chip startup SambaNova, sources say

Feb 6 (Reuters) - Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners is leading a new funding round of over $350 million in artificial intelligence chip startup SambaNova Systems, marking a rare departure from its traditional focus on enterprise software, according to people familiar with the matter. Vista, through a partnership with early-stage venture capital firm Cambium Capital, is investing in the Series E round for the chipmaker, three sources told Reuters. Other investors in the oversubscribed round include existing backer Intel Corp, which currently plans to invest about $100 million, with potential commitments of up to $150 million, two of the sources said. The AI computing startup is seeking the funding to compete with market leader Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), opens new tab and meet growing demand for inference chips used in AI applications. Reuters could not determine the valuation of the round, and sources cautioned that fundraising is ongoing and final terms could change. Vista, SambaNova and Intel declined to comment. Cambium did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. For Vista, with over $100 billion in assets, and a firm that "invests exclusively in enterprise software companies" according to its website, funding the AI chip startup marks a rare move outside its investment focus. The firm, known for large software acquisitions, has acquired cloud computing company Citrix Systems in 2022 and software company Nexthink in 2025. The deal comes as software stocks have come under pressure in recent months as AI has gone from a tailwind for many of these companies to a potential source of disruption. A selloff in global software shares this week wiped out nearly $1 trillion in value as investors reassess valuations. At the same time, interest in AI hardware has surged following a flurry of dealmaking around Nvidia challengers, as AI companies seek chips that can run inference quickly and efficiently. AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems said this week it raised $1 billion in a funding round that valued it at $23 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global and included Donald Trump Jr.-backed 1789 Capital. In December, another SambaNova rival, Groq, struck a deal for Nvidia to license its technology for a $20 billion in an all-cash deal and hire much of its team. OpenAI held talks with both Groq and Cerebras about compute supply deals as the AI lab seeks alternatives to Nvidia GPUs to meet fast-inference needs, Reuters reported, opens new tab earlier. The funding for SambaNova comes after acquisition talks with Intel stalled. Intel, whose CEO Lip-Bu Tan also serves as SambaNova's executive chairman, had previously discussed buying the startup for about $1.6 billion, including debt, Reuters reported earlier. SambaNova was valued at $5 billion in a 2021 funding round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2. The startup has since faced challenges and conducted layoffs in 2024. It has raised more than $1 billion from investors since it was founded in 2017 and has shifted its focus to AI inference and cloud services. The company last month told employees it had crossed its sales target for the fiscal year, one of the sources added. (This story has been refiled to remove the space in the company name 'SambaNova,' in the headline) Reporting by Milana Vinn in New York and Krystal Hu in San Francisco, editing by Echo Wang in New York and Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Business Milana Vinn Thomson Reuters Milana Vinn reports on technology, media, and telecom (TMT) mergers and acquisitions. Her content usually appears in the markets and deals sections of the website. Milana previously worked at GLG and PE Hub, where she spent several years covering TMT deals in private equity. She graduated from CUNY Graduate School of Journalism with Masters in Business Journalism. Krystal Hu Thomson Reuters Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.

Report: SambaNova is raising $350M+ from Intel-backed consortium - SiliconANGLE

Chip startup SambaNova Systems Inc. is in talks to raise more than $350 million from investors, Reuters reported today. The deal is expected to be led by Vista Equity Partners. That's notable partly because the private equity firm has until now invested solely in enterprise software companies. Its reported change of focus may be motivated by this week's broad selloff in software stocks. Reuters' sources said that venture capital firm Cambium Capital and Intel Corp. will also contribute to the round. The chipmaker reportedly plans to invest up to $150 million. The valuation that SambaNova could receive in the round wasn't specified. In December, word emerged that Intel had offered to acquire the chipmaker for $1.6 billion including debt. That's about one third what SambaNova was worth following its most recent funding round in 2021. The company reportedly started seeking new financing last month after the acquisition talks with Intel stalled. SambaNova's flagship product is an artificial intelligence inference chip called the SN40L. It contains 1,040 cores made using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s 5-nanometer process. They can perform 638 trillion calculations per second on data stored in the BF16 format. The SN40L's cores are spread across two separate silicon dies. Those dies sit on a base layer, or interposer, made using a TSMC technology called CoWoS. The interposer also hosts a high-speed pool of HBM memory that the chip uses to store AI models' data. A neural network comprises multiple modules called kernels. Those kernels, which are programs optimized to run across a large number of cores at one, regularly exchange data with one another. The longer it takes the data to flow from one program to another, the more time is needed to complete calculations. The SN40L installs kernels on chip sections that are immediately adjacent to one another. That enables data to move between them faster than in configurations where kernels run on remote corners of the chip. According to SambaNova, the resulting reduction in data movement not only speeds up processing but also saves power. The SN40L uses a technique called operator fusion to skip unnecessary computations. It works by combining hundreds of calculations into a single operation. The technique can boost processing efficiency, but it produces a significant amount of on-chip data traffic that can cause bottlenecks. SambaNova says that the SN40L's onboard network automatically fixes those bottlenecks. The company ships its silicon as part of an air-cooled system (pictured) that contains 16 inference accelerators. The SambaStack, as it's called, also includes networking hardware and power management components. It can run AI models with up to 5 trillion parameters. Last July, SambaNova introduced an offering called SambaManaged that reduced the amount of time needed to deploy its hardware to 90 days. Over the next six months, the company inked hardware deals with four different data center operators. One of the contracts will see SambaNova supply chips for a sovereign cloud campus in Scotland with more than 2 gigawatts of planned capacity. According to Reuters, the chipmaker exceeded its 2025 sales goals. SambaNova's recent customer momentum may be one of the reasons it has drawn interest from institutional investors and Intel.

Vista Equity Partners and Intel to lead investment in AI chip startup SambaNova: Report

Private equity firm ⁠Vista Equity Partners is leading a new funding round of over $350 million in artificial intelligence chip startup SambaNova Systems, marking a rare departure from its traditional focus on enterprise software. Private equity firm ⁠Vista Equity Partners is leading a new funding round of over $350 million in artificial intelligence chip startup SambaNova Systems, marking a rare departure from its traditional focus on enterprise software, according to people familiar with the matter. Vista, through a partnership with early-stage venture capital firm Cambium Capital, is investing in the Series E round for the chipmaker, three sources told Reuters. Other investors in the oversubscribed round include existing backer Intel Corp, which currently plans to invest about $100 million, with potential commitments of up to $150 million, two of the sources said. The AI computing startup is seeking the funding to compete with market leader Nvidia Corp and meet growing demand for inference chips used in AI applications. Reuters could not determine the valuation of the round, and sources cautioned that fundraising is ongoing and final terms could change. Vista, SambaNova and Intel declined to comment. Cambium did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. For Vista, with over $100 billion in assets, and a firm that "invests exclusively in enterprise software companies" according to its website, funding the AI chip startup marks a rare move outside its investment focus. The firm, known for large software acquisitions, has acquired cloud computing company Citrix Systems in 2022 and software company Nexthink in 2025. The deal comes as software stocks have come under pressure in recent months as AI has gone from a tailwind for many of these companies to a potential source of disruption. A selloff in global software shares this week wiped out nearly $1 trillion in value as investors reassess valuations. At the same time, interest in AI hardware has surged following a flurry of dealmaking around Nvidia challengers, as AI companies seek chips that can run inference quickly and efficiently. AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems said this week it raised $1 billion in a funding round that valued it at $23 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global and included Donald Trump Jr-backed 1789 Capital. In December, another SambaNova rival, Groq, struck a deal for Nvidia to license its technology for a $20 billion in an all-cash deal and hire much of its team. OpenAI held talks with both Groq and Cerebras about ⁠compute supply deals as the AI ⁠lab seeks alternatives to Nvidia GPUs to meet fast-inference needs, Reuters reported earlier. The funding for SambaNova comes after acquisition talks with Intel stalled. Intel, whose CEO Lip-Bu Tan also serves as SambaNova's executive chairman, had previously discussed buying the startup for about $1.6 billion, including debt, Reuters reported earlier. SambaNova was valued at $5 billion in a 2021 funding round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2. The startup has since faced challenges and conducted layoffs in 2024. It has raised more than $1 billion from investors since it was founded in 2017 and has shifted its focus to AI inference and cloud services. The company last month told employees it had crossed its sales target for the fiscal year, one of the sources added.

Vista Equity Partners and Intel to lead investment in AI chip startup Samba Nova, sources say

Feb 6 (Reuters) - Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners is leading a new funding round of over $350 million in artificial intelligence chip startup SambaNova Systems, marking a rare departure from its traditional focus on enterprise software, according to people familiar with the matter. Vista, through a partnership with early-stage venture capital firm Cambium Capital, is investing in the Series E round for the chipmaker, three sources told Reuters. Other investors in the oversubscribed round include existing backer Intel Corp, which currently plans to invest about $100 million, with potential commitments of up to $150 million, two of the sources said. The AI computing startup is seeking the funding to compete with market leader Nvidia Corp and meet growing demand for inference chips used in AI applications. Reuters could not determine the valuation of the round, and sources cautioned that fundraising is ongoing and final terms could change. Vista, SambaNova and Intel declined to comment. Cambium did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. For Vista, with over $100 billion in assets, and a firm that "invests exclusively in enterprise software companies" according to its website, funding the AI chip startup marks a rare move outside its investment focus. The firm, known for large software acquisitions, has acquired cloud computing company Citrix Systems in 2022 and software company Nexthink in 2025. The deal comes as software stocks have come under pressure in recent months as AI has gone from a tailwind for many of these companies to a potential source of disruption. A selloff in global software shares this week wiped out nearly $1 trillion in value as investors reassess valuations. At the same time, interest in AI hardware has surged following a flurry of dealmaking around Nvidia challengers, as AI companies seek chips that can run inference quickly and efficiently. AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems said this week it raised $1 billion in a funding round that valued it at $23 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global and included Donald Trump Jr.-backed 1789 Capital. In December, another SambaNova rival, Groq, struck a deal for Nvidia to license its technology for a $20 billion in an all-cash deal and hire much of its team. OpenAI held talks with both Groq and Cerebras about compute supply deals as the AI lab seeks alternatives to Nvidia GPUs to meet fast-inference needs, Reuters reported earlier. The funding for SambaNova comes after acquisition talks with Intel stalled. Intel, whose CEO Lip-Bu Tan also serves as SambaNova's executive chairman, had previously discussed buying the startup for about $1.6 billion, including debt, Reuters reported earlier. SambaNova was valued at $5 billion in a 2021 funding round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2. The startup has since faced challenges and conducted layoffs in 2024. It has raised more than $1 billion from investors since it was founded in 2017 and has shifted its focus to AI inference and cloud services. The company last month told employees it had crossed its sales target for the fiscal year, one of the sources added. (Reporting by Milana Vinn in New York and Krystal Hu in San Francisco, editing by Echo Wang in New York and Chizu Nomiyama )