US antitrust authorities have completed their review of Intel's growing investment in SambaNova Systems, the AI chip startup chaired by Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, without taking enforcement action.
The Federal Trade Commission granted early termination under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, meaning both the FTC and the Department of Justice concluded their examination and chose not to challenge the transaction.
The clearance does not represent an endorsement of Intel's broader strategy but removes a regulatory hurdle from a deal that had attracted scrutiny because of Tan's dual role as chief executive of the investing company and chairman of the target.
Intel invested $35 million in SambaNova in February, raising its stake to 8.2% from 6.8% a year earlier, and has planned a further $15 million investment.
SambaNova, founded in 2017 by former Stanford University researchers, designs custom AI inference chips and provides enterprise-scale systems for deploying and fine-tuning large language models.
The company announced a collaboration with Intel on its most recent earnings call, developing a heterogeneous AI inference architecture that pairs Intel's Xeon server processors with SambaNova's custom accelerators.
The partnership is central to Tan's thesis that as AI workloads shift from GPU-intensive training towards inference and agentic tasks, CPU design becomes increasingly important.
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Intel reported first-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, beating consensus by more than $1 billion, with its data centre and AI segment growing 22% year on year, driven by sustained demand for Xeon server processors from hyperscalers and equipment manufacturers.
Intel shares were up nearly 5% on Friday following the antitrust clearance and have risen roughly 14% over the past month.
The recap
- U.S. Antitrust review of Intel's SambaNova investment is complete.
- Intel increased stake to 8.2% after $35 million investment.
- Intel had planned to invest an additional $15 million.
