The Future of AI Isn't Training. It's Inference | SambaNova x Forbes
The AI industry is entering a new phase. As AI adoption accelerates, the challenge is no longer just training models—it's running them efficiently, reliably, and fast enough to power the next generation of agentic applications. When Forbes visited SambaNova's headquarters in San Jose, the conversation quickly became about more than chips. It became a discussion about the future of AI infrastructure, the growing demand for inference, and why speed, efficiency, and power consumption may determine the next winners in artificial intelligence. In this feature, hear from: • Rodrigo Liang, CEO & Founder of SambaNova • Dharmesh Thakker, General Partner at Battery Ventures • SambaNova engineering and product leaders Topics include: ✅ Why AI is shifting from training to inference ✅ The growing power and data center bottleneck facing the industry ✅ What "premium inference" means and why it matters ✅ How agentic AI changes infrastructure requirements ✅ The role of AI accelerators alongside CPUs and GPUs ✅ Why speed is becoming a competitive advantage in AI ✅ The future of enterprise AI deployment As Rodrigo Liang explains: "It's much lower power, much smaller footprint, and it's faster than anybody else. What's not to like?" Learn more about SambaNova and our AI inference platform: https://sambanova.ai/ #AI #Inference #AgenticAI #ArtificialIntelligence #DataCenters #MachineLearning #Semiconductors #NVIDIA #EnterpriseAI #sambanova Timestamps 00:00 What does machine learning actually want? 00:21 The AI boom's multitrillion-dollar bottleneck 01:06 Why existing hardware can't keep up 01:39 NVIDIA's dominance and the rise of inference 02:16 Enter SambaNova Systems 02:41 Training vs. inference explained 03:45 Why memory—not compute—is the new bottleneck 04:44 Inside SambaNova's SN50 architecture 05:33 The rise of premium inference 06:29 Why speed is becoming a proxy for intelligence 07:06 MiniMax benchmark: SambaNova vs. NVIDIA GPUs 08:08 AI's growing power and data center crisis 09:36 Air cooling vs. high-density AI infrastructure 11:06 Deploying AI in existing enterprise data centers