{"slug": "one-to-watch-sambanova-on-premium-inferencing-and-choosing-your-lane", "title": "One To Watch - SambaNova on premium inferencing and choosing your lane", "summary": "SambaNova, a chip startup founded in 2017 by Kunle Olukotun, Chris Ré, and Rodrigo Liang, has raised over $1 billion in a Series F at an $11 billion valuation, positioning its Reconfigurable Dataflow Units (RDU) as an energy-efficient alternative to NVIDIA GPUs for premium AI inference workloads. Its newest SambaRack SN50 hardware, featuring 16 SN50 RDU chips, claims 5x more compute per accelerator than its predecessor at an average of 10kW, according to Chief Product and Strategy Officer Abhi Ingle.", "body_md": "[startups](/tag/startups/)\n\n*Welcome to The Stack’s One To Watch. Every week we pick out a notable startup and go deep on what they’re building, why they’re building it, and the trials behind it all.*\n\nThere's no doubt NVIDIA has dominated the AI chips conversation and market this decade, with its GPUs powering most of the AI workloads active right now. But in the startup world, SambaNova has attracted plenty of attention with its Reconfigurable Dataflow Units (RDU) architecture.\n\nSet up by Kunle Olukotun, Chris Ré, and Rodrigo Liang in 2017, the chip maker has raised billions in VC funding since then and was most recently valued at $11 billion after closing a $1 billion [Series F in early July](https://sambanova.ai/press/sambanova-completes-first-close-of-1b-financing-at-11b-valuation?ref=thestack.technology), months after a [$350 million Series E](https://www.thestack.technology/stackup-the-stacks-weekly-tech-startups-and-funding-wrap-33/).\n\nIts newest rack hardware, the SambaRack SN50, is built with 16 of its SN50 RDU chips and claims to deliver 5x more compute per accelerator than its predecessor using an average of 10kW, positioning it as an energy-efficient alternative to GPUs.\n\nChief Product and Strategy Officer Abhi Ingle spoke to *The Stack* about why the company is focused on energy efficiency, servicing premium inference workloads, and deploying its chips both alone and with existing infrastructure.\n\n## Get the full story: Subscribe for free\n\nJoin peers managing over $100 billion in annual IT spend and subscribe to unlock full access to The Stack’s analysis and events.\n\n[Subscribe now](https://www.thestack.technology/membership/)\n\nAlready a member? [Sign in](https://www.thestack.technology/signin/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/one-to-watch-sambanova-on-premium-inferencing-and-choosing-your-lane", "canonical_source": "https://www.thestack.technology/one-to-watch-sambanova-on-premium-inferencing-and-choosing-your-lane/", "published_at": "2026-07-29 11:36:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-29 11:53:51.555618+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-chips", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-startups", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["SambaNova", "NVIDIA", "Kunle Olukotun", "Chris Ré", "Rodrigo Liang", "Abhi Ingle", "SambaRack SN50", "SN50 RDU"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/one-to-watch-sambanova-on-premium-inferencing-and-choosing-your-lane", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/one-to-watch-sambanova-on-premium-inferencing-and-choosing-your-lane.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/one-to-watch-sambanova-on-premium-inferencing-and-choosing-your-lane.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/one-to-watch-sambanova-on-premium-inferencing-and-choosing-your-lane.jsonld"}}