Intel’s SambaNova AI Chip Investment Clears U.S. Antitrust Review

U.S. antitrust regulators on Friday, May 1, 2026 completed their review of Intel’s investment in SambaNova Systems, the AI inference chip startup chaired by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, according to a regulatory notice circulated by Reuters and republished by Investing.com. The early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period removes the final regulatory hurdle to a multi-year strategic partnership the two companies first signed earlier this year. Intel shares climbed in the session as the news cleared a legal overhang that had drawn scrutiny because of the unusual dual role Tan plays at both companies.

Intel put $35 million into SambaNova in February 2026 and has signaled an additional $15 million investment, raising Intel’s stake from 6.8% to 8.2%, according to U.S. News’ read of the regulatory filing. The partnership pairs SambaNova’s Reconfigurable Dataflow Units (RDUs) with Intel’s Xeon 6 server CPUs, accelerators and networking gear to build integrated AI inference systems. The first co-designed platform combining Intel CPUs, GPUs and SambaNova RDUs is targeted for release in the second half of 2026 and will compete directly with NVIDIA-based reference systems on agentic AI workloads.

The clearance lands as Intel’s broader turnaround narrative is gaining traction. CFO David Zinsner said earlier this week that advanced packaging will now generate billions of dollars annually, up from a previous “hundreds of millions” guide, and Intel’s 14A foundry node is being courted by AMD, NVIDIA, Apple and Google as PDK 1.0 nears release. With the SambaNova deal now clear, Intel can move toward formally co-marketing inference systems and adding SambaNova’s software stack to its enterprise sales motion — a meaningful tactical answer to NVIDIA’s end-to-end inference dominance heading into the Q2 enterprise AI buying cycle.