South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions said Monday it has raised $400 million as it looks to expand into the U.S. market ahead of a public listing.
Mirae Asset Financial Group and the Korea National Growth Fund, an investment vehicle of the South Korean government, led the round, which values Rebellions at $2.34 billion.
Rebellions is one of the many semiconductor startups looking to capitalize on demand for AI chips and investor appetite for companies that are fueling the build-out of infrastructure for the technology.
Sunghyun Park, CEO of Rebellions, told CNBC that the money will be used to expand into the U.S.
“Our main target right now is big labs,” Park said, naming companies like Meta and xAI as target customers, rather than hyperscalers like Amazon and Microsoft.
Park added that Rebellions currently has some active proof-of-concept trials with customers in the U.S.
The CEO also said the company is preparing for an initial public offering, as CNBC previously reported, but declined to give any specifics on the timeline or listing location.
AI inference focus
Rebellions’ chips are focused on inferencing, the process of running AI applications rather than training them. While Nvidia‘s graphics processing units (GPUs) have been the gold standard for training AI models, there is an increasing focus on chips that can run inferencing processes quickly while also being more energy efficient.
Rebellions sells server systems made up of its Rebel100 NPU chips.
The South Korean startup competes not only with Nvidia but also with a growing list of other startups from Cerebras to Groq — a company that Nvidia licenses technology from.
“When it comes to inference alone, our chip offers … much higher energy efficiency and performance at the same time,” Park said, discussing Rebellions’ differentiation with the competition.
Park declined to provide sales figures but said that the company has a “strong revenue pipeline.” However, he noted that one of the challenges right now is securing a supply of memory chips.
These types of semiconductors, produced by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, are in high demand but also in short supply, leading to an unprecedented rise in prices of the component.
“Memory is not very easy to get. But our demand is so huge,” Park said. He added that because two of the world’s biggest memory makers, Samsung and SK Hynix, are investors, Rebellions is “the best-positioned” to obtain memory supply, compared to other startups.
South Korea’s chip bet
Rebellions is a central part of the South Korean government’s attempt to boost the country’s domestic semiconductor sector.
Last year, the government launched its “K-Nvidia” initiative, a plan designed to invest government funds into companies designing advanced AI chips.
The Korea National Growth Fund, one of Rebellions’ investors in the latest funding round, contributed 250 billion Korean won ($166 million), the government announced on Friday.
Samsung, SK Hynix and Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco are all investors in Rebellions.
Source: CNBC