Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners is leading a Series E funding round exceeding $350 million in AI chip startup SambaNova Systems, with Intel committing up to $150 million of the total investment. The deal marks a strategic departure for Vista, which has historically focused exclusively on enterprise software companies according to its website.
Intel plans to invest approximately $100 million initially, with potential commitments reaching $150 million according to sources familiar with the matter. The chipmaker previously discussed acquiring SambaNova for about $1.6 billion including debt in December, but those talks stalled last month according to Reuters reporting.
SambaNova, valued at $5 billion in a 2021 SoftBank-led funding round, seeks capital to compete with Nvidia in the AI inference chip market. The startup has raised over $1 billion since its 2017 founding and shifted focus to AI inference and cloud services after facing challenges that included layoffs in 2024.
The funding round arrives during a software stock selloff that wiped nearly $1 trillion from global software shares this week. Vista's move into hardware investment coincides with this market shift, as the firm with over $100 billion in assets typically "invests exclusively in enterprise software companies."
SambaNova's flagship SN40L inference chip contains 1,040 cores manufactured using TSMC's 5-nanometer process, capable of 638 trillion calculations per second.
The company ships its silicon in air-cooled SambaStack systems containing 16 accelerators that can run AI models with up to 5 trillion parameters.
The startup exceeded its 2025 sales targets last month and recently secured contracts with four data center operators, including one to supply chips for a sovereign cloud campus in Scotland with more than 2 gigawatts of planned capacity. SambaNova introduced SambaManaged last July, reducing hardware deployment time to 90 days.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan serves as SambaNova's executive chairman, creating a strategic connection between the companies. The investment follows recent AI chip funding activity including Cerebras Systems' $1 billion round at a $23 billion valuation this week and Nvidia's $20 billion deal to license Groq's technology in December.
Vista, SambaNova, and Intel declined to comment on the funding round according to Reuters. Cambium Capital, partnering with Vista on the investment, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
