Intel has signed a letter of intent to acquire the AI chip startup SambaNova Systems, but specific transaction details remain undisclosed. The letter of intent is non-binding, meaning both parties can still withdraw under applicable conditions, and the final merger agreement has not been finalized yet.

SambaNova is chaired by Lip-Bu Tan, Intel's current CEO, who has a deep understanding of SambaNova's business and technology. As of early 2025, SambaNova has raised approximately $1.14 billion in funding, indicating market recognition of its technology. The company's core product is the "Reconfigurable Data Flow Unit" (RDU), designed to meet the needs of large model inference.

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The latest generation RDU chip from SambaNova integrates 1,040 cores, offering about 653 TeraFLOPS of BF16 compute power, paired with 520MB on-chip cache and 64GB high-bandwidth HBM3 memory, and supports large language models through an external 1.5TB DDR memory pool. Currently, SambaNova remains a private company, and specific sales data have not been publicly disclosed.

The focus of the market is on how Intel will integrate SambaNova into its AI product strategy if the acquisition is completed. In recent years, Intel has supplemented its AI product line through acquisitions of several companies, including Movidius, which focuses on NPU, and Habana Labs, which specializes in data center training and inference. Movidius' NPU technology has been integrated into multiple generations of Intel processors, while Habana's Gaudi series data center accelerators have had limited market response.

Intel plans to continue integrating some of Gaudi's intellectual property in its next-generation AI acceleration product "Jaguar Shores," targeting training and inference scenarios. SambaNova's technology offers Intel new options: RDU and related software could be developed as an independent product line, or their core technologies could be combined with existing data center platforms.

At present, Intel has not publicly disclosed specific integration plans, and the market will closely watch the final outcome of this transaction and whether it can help Intel enhance its position in the competitive AI accelerator chip market.

Key Points:   

🌟 Intel has signed a letter of intent to acquire SambaNova, but transaction details remain undisclosed.  

💡 SambaNova's RDU chip has high computing power and is mainly used for large model inference.  

🔍 The market is paying attention to how Intel will integrate SambaNova to enhance its AI product line.