AI chip startup SambaNova is in talks to raise more than $350 million in funding, with a report saying Intel would invest $150 million.

Reuters reported on Friday that the round is being led by Vista Equity Partners and Qavam Capital is also set to participate. Last year Intel proposed acquiring SambaNova, but the talks were delayed and SambaNova shifted its focus to raising new funding.

SambaNova's key product, the SN40L chip, is based on TSMC's 5-nanometre process and has 1,040 cores, performing 638 trillion operations per second. Its architecture is designed to optimise data movement between adjacent cores to boost processing speed and cut power consumption. The company said it applies an "operator fusion" technique that combines operations to reduce unnecessary calculations and improve efficiency.

The company provides the "SambaStack" system, including the chip, and supports AI models that can process up to 5 trillion parameters. The SambaManaged service launched in July last year cut hardware deployment time to 90 days and has since signed contracts with 4 data centre operators. SambaNova is also participating in a project to build a 2-gigawatt sovereign cloud campus in Scotland.

SambaNova also exceeded its revenue target in 2025.