Nvidia chip challenger FuriosaAI scores LG as first major customer
Inc., the Seoul-based startup seeking to design chips to compete with
Nvidia
Corp., has sealed its first major contract months after rejecting an $800 million acquisition offer from Meta Platforms Inc.
The startup won final approval for its
AI chip
RNGD (pronounced 'Renegade') from
LG AI Research
after seven months of rigorous evaluation spanning performance and efficiency. The larger Korean company will use the chip to power its Exaone large-language models, FuriosaAI Chief Executive Officer June Paik told Bloomberg News.
LG's approval is a validation for FuriosaAI, one of a handful of Korean chip designers hoping to ride a post-ChatGPT boom in
AI infrastructure
. The
RNGD chip
was designed to challenge not just industry leader Nvidia but also fellow startups Groq Inc., SambaNova Systems Inc. and Cerebras Systems Inc.
'For the last eight years, we worked very hard from R&D to product phases and finally this commercialisation phase,' Paik said. 'This signals that our product is ready for enterprise adoption.'
Founded in 2017 by Paik, who previously worked at Samsung Electronics Co. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., FuriosaAI develops semiconductors for AI inferencing or services. It claims to deliver 2.25 times better inference performance per watt compared to graphics processing units.
Like Korean peers Rebellions Inc. and Semifive Inc., FuriosaAI is trying to tap a giant semiconductor ecosystem of talent, suppliers and government incentives that've sprung up around Samsung and SK Hynix Inc. over the past decade.
As part of their partnership, FuriosaAI and LG intend to deploy RNGD servers using Exaone across a range of industries from electronics to finance. They will also power LG's in-house enterprise AI agent, ChatExaone, which the company plans to expand to external clients.
FuriosaAI is working to secure its next customers in the US, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It expects to reach similar agreements in the second half of this year, Paik said.
FuriosaAI attracted public attention when news emerged in March that it had rejected Meta's advances, opting for independence. It plans to raise capital before eventually pursuing an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
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