This article is part of our Inno Awards feature. SambaNova was honored under the artificial intelligence category. Check out the other Inno Awards honorees here.
Many companies run AI on what has historically been a gaming chip, however, the founders of Silicon Valley startup SambaNova Systems saw room for improvement.
Unlike the chips which have been used in PlayStations, SambaNova’s AI models run on chips optimized for AI. The Palo Alto-headquartered company brings customers unique AI hardware, software and models that target efficiency and privacy.
CEO and co-founder Rodrigo Liang said he views the company as the most credible alternative to Nvidia, its Silicon Valley neighbor that also produces AI infrastructure. Nvidia dominates the AI chip scene, and its stock hit the $3 trillion market cap in early June.
SambaNova’s total funding reached $1.1 billion, with the company taking in $676 million in Series D funding in 2021, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
“We’re the best funded AI chips startup in the world and so we’re really proud of it – not just the amount that we raised, but also the types of investors,” Liang said.
Walden International, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Intel Capital and Blackrock led prior rounds of funding.
Among Liang’s co-founders is Stanford professor Kunle Olukotun, an expert in computer architecture, who is known as the “father of the multicore processor” – a technology allowing for major improvements in chip efficiency and speed. Liang and Olukotun previously worked together at another tech startup that was eventually sold to Oracle Corporation. Liang has experience building various versions of hardware and software for large companies.
Their third cofounder is MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Christopher Ré, who teaches at Stanford and has an extensive background in machine learning model research.
When looking at the hardware and software used for AI, the trio knew it could be better.
“AI is a very different type of workload, you need something significantly more efficient,” Liang said. “You need a chip (and) you need software that goes along with it and so the three of us came together and we put this company together, hiring some of the best talents who knew how to build chips (and) build enterprise software.”
SambaNova says its chips run models faster than other products on the market, while requiring fewer chips to do the work.
SambaNova’s chips are manufactured in Taiwan by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which also produces chips for Nvidia.
Another key characteristic of SambaNova is its focus on privacy.
“The world is moving to a phase where people care a lot about their private data,” Liang said.
Open Source AI models train with public data, but for governments and companies hoping to adopt AI and train it using private information, this poses an issue. If a company needs AI to write a contract, taking into account how past documents were constructed and what the
company cares about, the AI must understand these private business details.
“We give you private, very customized AI, which gives you a lot of these generative AI capabilities that ChatGPT gives you but … completely private,” Liang said.
SambaNova’s AI models can train on that private information, creating AI tailored to the company, while keeping its data private.
SambaNova’s technology has already been deployed in businesses and in the U.S. government. It is used across North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, but Liang said they hope to expand further.
“We’re proud that we are in 15 countries,”Liang said. “We ship our products to three continents today and there are other continents we’ve got to go cover, more countries we’ve got to cover.”
About SambaNova Systems
Location: Palo Alto
Industries: AI, chips, enterprise software
Founders: Rodrigo Liang, Kunle Olukotun, Christopher Ré
Founded: 2017
Funding: $1.1 billion
Major investors: SoftBank Vision Fund 2, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Intel Capital, GV, Walden International, Temasek, GIC, Redline Capital, Atlantic Bridge Ventures, Celesta and several others
Why they were chosen: SambaNova is a well-funded, growing company that is has its sights on competing with one of the most valuable companies in the world, Nvidia. If its thesis around chipmaking pans out, the payoff could be astronomical.
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