South Korean AI Chip Startup FuriosaAI Raises $125 Million
South Korean AI chip startup FuriosaAI, which Meta considered buying earlier this year, said it has raised a $125 million Series C bridge financing, bringing total funding to date to $246 million.
FuriosaAI is currently valued at $735 million, the startup said in a statement. Investors in the round include Korean state-run lenders Korea Development Bank and Industrial Bank of Korea, and local investment firms Kakao Investment (the corporate investment arm of internet giant Kakao), Keistone Partners (a private equity firm with about 2.4 trillion won in cumulative assets under management) and PI Partners (a private equity firm founded last year whose main investment is in FuriosaAI).
The funds will be used to scale production of its AI inference chip RNGD (pronounced 'Renegade') and develop its next-generation chip. 'FuriosaAI has built a compelling alternative to GPUs for AI inference,' said Kim Do-young, CEO of Kakao Investment, in a statement. 'Their Tensor Contraction Processor chip architecture delivers the performance and power efficiency that is critical for the next wave of AI applications.'
RNGD is equipped with HBM3 chips—a type of high-performance memory crucial for AI computing—from SK Hynix and will be made using TSMC's 5-nanometer manufacturing process.
Last week, FuriosaAI announced that LG AI Research is using its chip to power the AI research lab's EXAONE large language models and its enterprise AI agent, ChatExaone.
FuriosaAI was founded in 2017 and is led by June Paik, who previously worked as a hardware engineer at Samsung Electronics and as a software engineer at AMD. As of the most recent public filing, Paik owned a 17.6% stake in FuriosaAI. The Seoul-based startup reported that revenue dropped 18.3% year-over-year to 3 billion won in 2024, while net loss doubled from the previous year to 152.2 billion won.
Meta, which is developing its own custom AI chips, had considered buying FuriosaAI earlier this year. Forbes was the first to report Meta's interest in buying FuriosaAI in February.
FuriosaAI's funding round comes almost a year after its domestic rival, Rebellions, completed its merger with SK Hynix-backed Sapeon. The combined company, which operates under the Rebellions name, is South Korea's first AI chip unicorn and is led by CEO Sunghyun Park, who earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and has previously worked at SpaceX, Intel and Samsung.
Before the merger, Rebellions had raised at least $225 million from investors including Saudi Aramco's venture arm Wa'ed Ventures, Kakao Ventures, South Korean telecom operator KT, Temasek's Pavilion Capital and Korelya Capital, founded and led by former French digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin.
Rebellions is in the middle of raising a new round of financing. Samsung joined the new funding round, which Rebellions is aiming to raise up to $200 million from investors.
Despite being a relatively small nation of some 50 million people, South Korea has top semiconductor talent. It's home to two of the world's largest memory chipmakers—Chey Tae-won's SK Hynix and Jay Y. Lee's Samsung—as well as key industry suppliers, including Kwak Dong Shin's equipment maker Hanmi Semiconductor and chemicals producer Chung Ji-wan's Soulbrain.
Supportive government policies have helped nurture the country's dense tech ecosystem of conglomerates and startups. The country's new president, Lee Jae Myung, pledged during his campaign to invest up to 100 trillion won (about $72 billion) in AI infrastructure and development, including AI chips.
More from Forbes Forbes South Korea's AI Chip Champion Is Poised To Carve Out Global Niche By John Kang Forbes Korean Internet Giant Kakao Teams With OpenAI To Jumpstart Growth By John Kang Forbes Nvidia-Backed AI Startup Cohere To Open Asia-Pacific Hub In South Korea By John Kang Forbes AI Data Center Boom Mints South Korea's Newest Billionaire By John Kang
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