SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $676 million Series D round in SambaNova Systems, a Palo Alto startup that makes chips and computer systems built for artificial intelligence. New investors Temasek and GIC joined, along with earlier backers BlackRock, Intel Capital, GV, Walden International and WRVI. The round valued SambaNova at more than $5 billion and brought its total funding to over $1 billion. The company SambaNova was founded in 2017 by Stanford professors Kunle Olukotun and Chris Ré with chief executive Rodrigo Liang, and came out of stealth in December 2020. Its chairman was Lip-Bu Tan. It sells DataScale, a combined hardware and software system for training and running AI models, and a subscription service built on it. Why the money Liang said traditional CPU and GPU designs had reached their limits, and that the money would help SambaNova take on established chipmakers more aggressively. Deep Nishar of SoftBank Investment Advisers praised its combined software and hardware design. What happened next SambaNova reportedly cut jobs in 2024. In December 2025, Bloomberg reported that Intel was in advanced talks to buy it for about $1.6 billion including debt, well below the 2021 valuation, but later reports said the talks stalled. SambaNova then turned to new funding led by Vista Equity Partners.
