As artificial intelligence applications grow and multiply, researchers have been racing to design a new generation of hardware that meets the unique computational needs of those applications. The market for these “AI chips” is booming, and a key player in this new space is Palo Alto based SambaNova Systems.
SambaNova, now a unicorn valued at over $2.5 billion, was co-founded by alumnus Kunle Olukotun, who serves as the company’s chief technologist. SambaNova’s approach creates a new platform from scratch that is optimized specifically for AI operations, rather than scaling existing architectures. Its first product is a system-level AI accelerator for hyperscale and enterprise data centers and high performance computing (HPC) applications.
