SAN JOSE, Calif. — June 12, 2026 — SambaNova, a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, today announced the appointment of Matt Padfield as Chief Financial Officer and Rich Heaton as Executive Vice President of Software. The appointments come as SambaNova enters a new phase of scale, driven by surging demand for premium inference and agentic AI.
"In a market that moves this fast, you need leaders who are wired for scale, speed, and ambition. Matt and Rich bring exactly that. We're building something rare at SambaNova — the leading premium inference chip, accelerating customer demand, and momentum that's only growing. Welcome to the team," said Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of SambaNova.
Matt Padfield, Chief Financial Officer
Matt joins SambaNova to build and lead the financial infrastructure that will support the company's next stage of growth, from operational rigor to strategic decision-making and capital allocation. Padfield brings deep finance leadership from high-growth semiconductor and technology companies, most recently as Group Vice President of Corporate FP&A at Coherent, and previously VP of FP&A and Corporate Development at Synaptics, where he served in an acting CFO capacity and led $1B+ in M&A activity.
"SambaNova is at a profound inflection point, driven by proven technology and explosive market demand," said Matt Padfield. "I’m excited to build a financial architecture that acts as a strategic engine for expansion, ensuring we optimize capital allocation, accelerate operational velocity, and translate our technological advantages into long-term value."
Rich Heaton, Executive Vice President of Software
Rich Heaton will lead the company's software organization with the mandate to accelerate the software platform as SambaNova's enterprise deployments surge in volume and complexity.
Rich brings 20+ years of experience leading large-scale engineering organizations, most recently as Director of Software at AWS, where he founded and grew the Neuron SDK organization, delivering the ML acceleration stack powering AWS Trainium and Inferentia. He has held C-level roles at venture-backed startups with successful exits and led a global engineering organization at Cisco.
"SambaNova has some of the world's most demanding AI deployments running on its platform. We’re in the position the rest of the industry is trying to get to. My job is to make sure our software keeps us there," said Rich Heaton.
About SambaNova
SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, providing a full-stack platform that powers efficient AI inference for enterprises, NeoClouds, AI labs and service providers, and sovereign AI initiatives worldwide. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Jose, California, SambaNova delivers chips, systems, and cloud services that enable customers to deploy state-of-the-art models with superior performance, lower total cost of ownership, and rapid time to value. Visit sambanova.ai or follow SambaNova on X and LinkedIn.
Contacts
Virginia Jamieson, Head of Communications, SambaNova
virginia.jamieson@sambanova.ai
+1 (650) 279-8619