Intel and AI chip startup SambaNova have entered into a multi-year strategic collaboration to deploy high-performance, cost-efficient AI inference solutions [1.] tailored for AI-native firms, enterprises, and government sectors. This global initiative leverages Intel® Xeon® infrastructure, with Intel Capital further signaling commitment through participation in SambaNova’s $350M Series E financing round.  The collaboration will give customers a powerful alternative to GPU‑centric solutions, offering optimized performance for leading open‑source models with predictable throughput and total cost of ownership. Founded in 2017, the Palo Alto, CA company specializes in AI chips and software. SambaNova’s Chairman is Lip-Bu Tan, who is also the CEO of Intel!

Note 1. AI inferencing is the process of using a trained AI model to make real-time predictions, decisions, or generate content from new, previously unseen data. It transforms inputs (a query, image, sensor reading) into useful results (a sentence, classification, alert). Unlike training and language models, inference is about prompt execution, often requiring low-latency (speed) and high efficiency. AI Inference chips have attracted intense investor interest following a wave of deal making around rivals to Nvidia, as AI companies seek faster and more efficient hardware. See References below for more information.

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For high-scale AI workloads, the integration of Intel CPUs with SambaNova’s specialized AI platform was said to offer a high-efficiency rack-level inference alternative. This partnership serves as a strategic bridge as Intel scales its independent GPU-based offerings. Intel remains fully committed to its internal GPU roadmap, continuing aggressive investment across architecture, software, and systems. This collaboration enhances Intel’s edge-to-cloud strategy without altering its competitive trajectory in the GPU market. By combining Xeon processors, Intel networking, and SambaNova systems, the two companies are positioned to capture a significant share of the multi-billion-dollar inference market through heterogeneous data center architectures.

As part of the collaboration, Intel plans to make a strategic investment in SambaNova to accelerate the rollout of an Intel‑powered AI cloud. The collaboration is expected to span three key areas:

• AI Cloud Expansion – Scaling SambaNova’s vertically integrated AI cloud, built on Intel Xeon‑based infrastructure and optimized for large language and multimodal models. The platform will deliver low‑latency, high‑throughput AI services, supported by reference architectures, deployment blueprints, and partnerships with system integrators and software vendors.
• Integrated AI Infrastructure – Combining SambaNova’s systems with Intel’s CPUs, accelerators, and networking technologies to power scalable, production‑ready inference for reasoning, code generation, multimodal applications, and agentic workflows.
• Go‑to‑Market Execution – Joint co‑selling and co‑marketing through Intel’s global enterprise, cloud, and partner channels to accelerate adoption across the AI ecosystem.

Together, SambaNova and Intel aim to shape the next generation of heterogeneous AI data centers — integrating Intel Xeon processors, Intel GPUs, Intel networking and storage, and SambaNova systems — to unlock a multi‑billion‑dollar inference market opportunity.

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SambaNova also announced its SN50 AI chip, which boasts a max speed that’s 5X faster than competitive chips, according to the company.

Image Credit: SambaNova

Positioned as the most efficient chip for agentic AI, the SN50 chip offers enterprises a 3X lower total cost of ownership – a powerful foundation to scale fast inference and bring autonomous AI agents into full production. The SN50 will be shipping to customers later this year.  To quickly scale and distribute SN50, SambaNova is collaborating with Intel, and has obtained $350 million in strategic Series E financing to expand manufacturing and cloud capacity.

“AI is no longer a contest to build the biggest model,” said Rodrigo Liang, co‑founder and CEO of SambaNova. “With the SN50 and our deep collaboration with Intel, the real race is about who can light up entire data centers with AI agents that answer instantly, never stall, and do it at a cost that turns AI from an experiment into the most profitable engine in the cloud.”

“Customers are asking for more choice and more efficient ways to scale AI,” said Kevork Kechichian, EVP, General Manager, Data Center Group, Intel. “By combining Intel’s leadership in compute, networking, and memory with SambaNova’s full-stack AI systems and inference cloud platform, we are delivering a compelling option for organizations looking for GPU alternatives to deploy advanced AI at scale.”

The SN50 delivers five times more compute per accelerator and four times more network bandwidth than the previous generation. It links up to 256 accelerators over a multi‑terabyte‑per‑second interconnect, cutting time‑to‑first‑token and supporting larger batch sizes. The result: Enterprises can deploy bigger, longer‑context AI models with higher throughput and responsiveness — while keeping performance high and costs and latency under control.

“AI is moving from a software story to an infrastructure story,” said Landon Downs, co-founder and managing partner at Cambium Capital. “SN50 is engineered for the real-world latency and economic requirements that will determine who successfully deploys agentic AI at scale.”

Built on SambaNova’s Reconfigurable Data Unit (RDU) architecture, SN50 delivers:

• Instant AI Experiences – Ultra‑low latency delivers real‑time responsiveness for next‑gen enterprise apps like voice assistants.
• Unmatched Scale and Concurrency – Power thousands of simultaneous AI sessions with consistent high performance.
• Breakthrough Model Capacity – Three‑tier memory architecture unlocks 10T+ parameter models and 10M+ context lengths for deeper reasoning and richer outputs.
• Maximum Efficiency at Scale – Higher hardware utilization lowers cost‑per‑token, driving greater performance and ROI.
• Smarter Memory, Smarter Efficiency – Resident multi‑model memory and agentic caching optimize the three‑tier architecture, cutting infrastructure costs for enterprise‑scale AI deployments.

“The new SambaNova SN50 RDU changes the tokenomics of AI inference at scale. By delivering both high performance and high throughput with a chip that uses existing power and is air cooled, SambaNova is changing the game,” said Peter Rutten, Research Vice-President Performance Intensive Computing at analyst firm IDC.

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SoftBank Corp. will be the first customer to deploy SN50 within its next‑generation AI data centers in Japan. The deployment will power low‑latency inference services for sovereign and enterprise customers across Asia‑Pacific, supporting both open‑source and proprietary frontier models with aggressive latency and throughput requirements.

“With SN50, we are building an AI inference fabric for Japan that can serve our customers and partners with the speed, resiliency and sovereignty they expect from SoftBank,” said Hironobu Tamba, Vice President and Head of the Data Platform Strategy Division of the Technology Unit at SoftBank Corp. “By standardizing on SN50, we gain the ability to deliver world‑class AI services on our own terms — with the performance of the best GPU clusters, but with far better economics and control.”

The SN50 deployment deepens SambaNova’s existing relationship with SoftBank Corp., which already hosts SambaCloud to provide ultra‑fast inference for developers in the region. By anchoring its newest clusters on SN50, SoftBank positions SambaNova as the inference backbone for its sovereign AI initiatives and future large‑scale agentic services.

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References:

https://newsroom.intel.com/data-center/intel-and-sambanova-planning-multi-year-collaboration-for-xeon-based-ai-inference

https://sambanova.ai/press/sambanova-unveils-fastest-chip-for-agentic-ai-collaborates-with-intel-and-raises-350m

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