Not often does the term “Dream Team” refer to something outside of sports, but if one were to think of it in terms of a tech startup, SambaNova System’s founders and funders fit the bill. The AI startup founded in 2017 in Palo Alto, California is building the most advanced software, hardware and services to run AI applications from the data center to the cloud and to the edge.
The “Dream Team” founders are Stanford professors Kunle Olukotun, Chris Ré and Rodrigo Liang. They are the top of the top in tech innovation. Olukotun is known as the “father of the multi-core processor” and the leader of the Stanford Hydra Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) research project. Ré is a MacArthur Genius Award recipient and associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University along with associate professor Rodrigo Liang. Liang is an entrepreneur having sold a prior company he founded and is affiliated with the Machine Learning Group, Pervasive Parrallelism Lab and Stanford AI Lab.
Their goal in founding SambaNova Systems is to move AI innovations that are developed in labs into organizations around the world. They believe this will lead to something akin to the democratization of AI, creating AI for everyone. They tout SambaNova as the best funded AI startup because of luminary venture capital names such as SoftBank Vision Fund 2, BlackRock, Intel Capital, GV, Walden International and others—who came to the table first. The latest $676 million Series D round led again by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 also includes some of the initial investors who are now joined by Temasek and GIC, bringing the startup’s valuation to over $5 billion.
“We’re here to revolutionize the AI market, and this round greatly accelerates that mission,” said Rodrigo Liang, SambaNova co-founder and CEO. “Traditional CPU and GPU architectures have reached their computational limits. To truly unleash AI’s potential to solve humanity’s greatest technology challenges, a new approach is needed. We’ve figured out that approach, and it’s exciting to see a wealth of prudent investors validate that.”
Having gathered the best of the best, the startup’s goal is nothing short of shattering the computational limits of AI hardware and software currently on the market, directly challenging legacy competitors. When they came out of stealth in 2020 they had a team of industry hardware and software design experts and world-class innovators from Sun/Oracle as well as Stanford University.
Their breakthrough platform will deliver “unprecedented AI capability and accessibility to customers worldwide” via Dataflow-as-a-Service (DaaS). The subscription service will empower organizations to jumpstart enterprise-level AI initiatives, augment AI capabilities and accelerate the work of existing data centers. Their platform allows organizations to focus on their business objectives, by-passing infrastructure challenges.
“In working with the industry’s premier investors, we have the support needed to bring SambaNova’s bold vision to life and make AI accessible for any organization,” said Lip-Bu Tan, SambaNova chairman. “The democratization of artificial intelligence will certainly accelerate how the technology impacts our world and will unlock new possibilities for its use.”
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