AI chip startup SambaNova Systems just snagged $1 billion in Series F funding, valuing the company at $11 billion. The round, led by General Atlantic, is still open—more investors are expected to join in the coming weeks. This comes just five months after the company unveiled its next-gen SN50 chip and closed a $350 million Series E. SambaNova’s growing partnership with Intel is a big part of the story: the two are now co-developing products, and Intel even participated in this latest round. The startup also inked a major deal with JPMorgan Chase, which chose SambaNova’s systems for secure, on-premises AI inference. CEO Rodrigo Liang says this signals a shift away from total reliance on cloud services, especially for sensitive data in banking and government. While SambaNova keeps getting acquisition offers (including one from Intel last year), Liang hints an IPO is more likely as the company rides surging demand. SambaNova focuses on fast, high-end inference for massive trillion-parameter models like Llama and GPT—a sweet spot as enterprises just begin their AI deployment journeys. Why it matters: SambaNova’s hefty raise and blue-chip customer win underscore a broader trend—enterprises are moving beyond cloud-only AI to build private, secure inference infrastructure for sensitive workloads, potentially reshaping the chip market landscape.