Report: Intel could acquire inference chip startup SambaNova for $1.6B – News

Intel Corp. is reportedly in talks to acquire SambaNova Systems Inc., a venture-backed developer of artificial intelligence chips.

Bloomberg today cited sources as saying that the discussions are in an advanced stage. It’s believed that an acquisition could value SambaNova at $1.6 billion including debt. If it materializes, the deal would mark Intel’s first major startup purchase under Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan, who joined the company in March. 

Palo Alto, California-based SambaNova sells an AI chip called the SN40L. It’s optimized for inference, or the task of running AI models in production after they’re trained. One of the chip’s main selling points is its power efficiency: SambaNova claims that it can generate more tokens per kilowatt hour than comparable processors from rivals.

The process through which an AI model answers a user prompt comprises numerous steps. After completing a step, the model saves its calculation results to memory and then moves them from memory to its host chip’s cores so that the next step may begin. That data movement accounts for a significant percentage of AI chips’ power consumption.

According to SambaNova, the SN40L significantly lowers data movement. It achieves that partly by compressing multiple inference-related calculations into a single operation, which reduces the number of memory round-trips necessary to process data. SN40L keeps data in three types of memory: high-speed SRAM, HBM and DRAM.

The company says that its chip also provides other benefits. The SN40L’s use of three memory varieties enables it to quickly load an AI model when users enter a prompt, which reduces wait times. Additionally, it claims, the chip can rapidly switch between different AI models when necessary.

SambaNova ships the SN40L as part of an appliance called the SambaRack that includes 16 chips. It runs a custom software toolkit, the SambaStack, that supports popular open-source large language models. It also provides access to its chips through a cloud service that doesn’t require customers to manage any hardware.

In 2018, SambaNova raised a $56 million funding round led by Walden International, Lip-Bu Tan’s venture capital firm. Tan is the chip startup’s executive chair. SambaNova later raised a $676 million round led by SoftBank Group Corp. that gave it a $5 billion valuation.

According to today’s report, Intel could close the acquisition as early as next month. However, Bloomberg’s sources cautioned that the timing of the deal may change. Furthermore, there’s reportedly a possibility SambaNova will opt against a sale to Intel. The company is believed to have signed terms sheets with multiple potential investors.

The report comes two months after Intel previewed an upcoming series of graphics processing units called Crescent Lake. Like SN40L, it’s optimized for data center inference and places an emphasis on power efficiency. 

Photo: Intel