2026년 2월 24일 · Unknown · financial · 출처 Yahoo Finance
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SambaNova, a startup developing AI chips designed to power large language models, has raised a $350 million Series E round.
It’s the latest mega-deal for a semiconductor startup and the surest sign yet of investor confidence that there’s room in the market beyond established players, namely Nvidia. As the AI boom has matured beyond the initial development of large language models, chip companies — and investors — are turning their focus to technologies better suited to handling the workload created by users and customers.
Vista Equity Partners and Cambium Capital led the round, with Intel Capital, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and GV also participating.
Founded in 2017, SambaNova has focused on building AI-specific chips from the outset. The startup last raised funding in April 2021 when it closed a $676 billion Series D round at a $5.1 billion valuation led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. SambaNova did not disclose a valuation as part of its latest financing.
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In December 2025, Wired reported that Intel was looking to acquire the chipmaker, though an agreement has since been announced.
Investor interest in AI-specific chip makers has been growing. VC funding for semiconductor startups increased 85% year-over-year in 2025, reaching $17.6 billion from $9.5 billion in 2024. Deal count remained mostly flat, declining from 346 deals in 2024 to 338 deals in 2025.
Dealmaking is showing no signs of slowing in momentum this year.
Just last month, Ricursive Intelligence, a frontier research lab focused on AI chip design, raised $300 million in Series A funding at a $4 billion valuation led by Lightspeed.
Earlier in January, the AI inference chip startup Etched announced $500 million in new funding from Stripes and Peter Thiel.
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This article originally appeared on PitchBook News
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