SambaNova Unveils SN50 Chip That Redefines Agentic AI Speed and Efficiency

Author : John Brown | Published On : 26 Feb 2026

SambaNova has introduced its next-generation SN50 AI chip, designed to deliver breakthrough performance and efficiency for agentic AI workloads, offering significantly faster inference and lower costs compared with traditional GPU-based systems. The company says the SN50’s purpose-built architecture enables organisations to run real-time AI agents with ultra-low latency and high throughput, helping redefine how enterprises deploy and scale intelligent applications.

The SN50 AI chip which is central to SambaNova’s latest hardware and cloud offerings achieves performance that the company claims is up to five times faster and up to three times more efficient for agentic inference compared with some competitive accelerators, while reducing total cost of ownership for inference workflows.

Built on SambaNova’s Reconfigurable Data Unit (RDU) architecture with a three-tier memory system, the SN50 supports rapid model switching and efficient memory usage, enabling it to power large-context AI models and complex agentic tasks with reduced power and latency.

To accelerate adoption and scale, SambaNova has also secured a strategic multi-year partnership with Intel with Intel Capital participating in the company’s $350 million Series E funding round that aims to deliver cost-effective, rack-scale inference solutions using SN50 hardware integrated with Intel Xeon CPUs. SoftBank will be among the first customers to deploy the SN50 in its next-generation AI data centres in Japan.

Executives at SambaNova describe the SN50 as a critical technology for enterprises seeking to move AI from experimentation to full-scale, production-ready deployment, particularly as demand for real-time autonomous agent applications grows.

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