By Sally Ward-Foxton, EETimes (June 10, 2021)
Data center AI chip and system startup SambaNova hit the headlines recently with an enormous Series D funding round of $676 million, pushing the 100-person company’s valuation above $5 billion, a staggering amount for a young company which only emerged from stealth at the end of 2020. The company is now one of the best-funded AI chip companies in the world, with more than $1.1 billion raised. EE Times sat down with SambaNova CEO Rodrigo Liang to discuss the company’s strategy and roadmap.
Firstly, why are SambaNova and its competitors in the data center AI space attracting such huge amounts of funding? Is it required to get the product right, does it take this amount of resources to go up against the incumbents, or does it simply reflect investors’ view of the market opportunity?
“As much as we know that semiconductor design is a very capital-intensive venture, a billion dollars in cash for a small company is a lot,” Liang said. “I think it reflects what people see as the market opportunity.”
The market for data center AI hardware and software systems is growing rapidly as demand increases for AI-specific processing power.