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Vista Equity Partners and Intel are co-leading a new funding round of more than $350 million for AI chip startup SambaNova Systems, a rare move into hardware for Vista, which is better known for enterprise software deals.
The Series E round is described as oversubscribed and is expected to include a sizable follow on investment from Intel, which has backed the company before. Figures circulating around the deal suggest Intel’s check could land around $100 million and potentially rise as high as $150 million. The valuation has not been disclosed and the fundraising is still being finalized.
Vista’s participation is being made through a partnership structure with early stage investor Cambium Capital, according to reports of the transaction. The new money is aimed at expanding SambaNova’s ability to compete in a market where spending is shifting toward inference, the computing work required to run AI models efficiently once they are trained.
That shift is reshaping how data centers buy hardware. Training large models remains expensive, but many businesses are now spending heavily on deploying generative AI for customer support, coding, security monitoring and internal analytics. Those workloads can be relentless and power hungry, raising interest in chips and systems that can deliver better performance per watt and tighter integration with software.
The round also lands at a split screen moment for investors. Software stocks have faced bouts of selling as markets debate which incumbents could be disrupted by AI, while demand for AI hardware remains intense because supply constraints and performance bottlenecks are still real.
SambaNova’s fundraise comes after earlier acquisition talks with Intel that did not proceed. Reports valued the potential deal at about $1.6 billion. Intel remains involved as an investor, a result that keeps the relationship alive while SambaNova pursues capital to scale its next phase.
Founded in 2017, SambaNova built custom chips and systems designed for enterprise AI workloads. The company was valued at $5 billion in 2021 during the peak of the last funding boom, then later went through layoffs and strategic adjustments as the market cooled and competition sharpened. The company has raised more than $1 billion over its lifetime and has said it recently met its annual sales targets.
