SambaNova Systems welcomes semiconductor industry veteran Lip-Bu Tan to operational role as Executive Chairman
Source: Business Wire
In addition to running intelLip-Bu Tan is chairman of artificial intelligence chip maker SambaNova, which he first invested in eight years ago. Intel is now pumping money into startups in an attempt to compete with industry leaders Nvidia.
SambaNova, a maker of chips for running generative AI models, has agreed to select Intel’s server chips and graphics cards in a multi-year partnership, according to a release Tuesday. Intel also participated in a $350 million funding round after first investing in SambaNova in 2019.
Nvidia’s graphics processing units have long been the silicon of choice for AI modeling companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, and it helped spark the AI boom with the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022. Nvidia has been the biggest beneficiary of the AI boom and is now the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, while Intel’s revenue has fallen for four consecutive years.
Intel is currently assembling its own graphics cards, Tan said in his speech. Cisco Event earlier this month. The stock has risen 75% over the past year, thanks in large part to large investments from the U.S. government and Nvidia.
But to become a true player in the AI chip market, it needs Intel’s help. The company previously considered acquiring SambaNova for $1.6 billion, but negotiations fell through, Bloomberg reported in January.
Sambanova counts hug face, meta Customers include major AI labs. Under the new partnership, Intel and SambaNova will collaborate on sales and marketing to drive adoption.
“We didn’t accomplish all of this overnight,” SambaNova co-founder and CEO Rodrigo Liang said in an interview with CNBC. “We’re not going to work tomorrow with all of this ready to go, but we’re doing a lot of planning work to actually solve the problem, and then we’ll be able to provide a more streamlined solution.”
Intel and SambaNova declined to comment on whether the companies have discussed an acquisition.
Mr Tan became chairman of SambaNova in 2017. Walden International, the venture firm Tan founded in 1987, made an early bet on the startup. Google Venture arm. An Intel spokesperson said Tan had recused himself from discussions about the partnership.
SambaNova is touting a new chip called SN50, which Liang says will deliver higher performance than the GPUs in Nvidia’s Blackwell-based B200 systems, offering more computing power for the same price. The company says customers can connect up to 256 processors.
SoftbankThe startup said the company, which is a leading investor in OpenAI, plans to deploy SN50 and is also an existing customer of SambaNova.
Liang said SambaNova is well aware of Nvidia’s dominance, but believes there is room for other players to enter.
“I think you have to be realistic about the fact that Nvidia is prevalent today in terms of what people like to use, but there are new technologies coming out that run them really, really efficiently,” he said. “And if you route that traffic in a heterogeneous environment, which is what most people are starting to do, you’ll find that you get much better value from your infrastructure.”
SambaNova wants to expand its own cloud for running AI models and is looking to sell clusters that companies can run in their own data centers.
Other investors in SambaNova include private equity firms Vista Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, Seligman Ventures, and T. Rowe Price.
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