Latest news with #FuriosaAI
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
South Korean AI Chip Startup FuriosaAI Raises $125 Million
June Paik, CEO of FuriosaAI, during the Super AI Conference in Singapore, on June 18, 2025. Ore Huiying/Bloomberg 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
Associated Press
a day ago
- Business
- Associated Press
MHS Unveils ‘MACS' Micro Aqua Cooling System to Tackle AI Semiconductor Heat in Datacenters
As generative artificial intelligence (AI) dramatically raises computational demands—such as creating over 700 million images within one week using ChatGPT (equivalent to the daily electricity consumption of approximately 67,000 U.S. households)—heat generation in AI semiconductors has become a pressing concern for datacenter operators. South Korean tech firm MHS is introducing MACS (Micro Aqua Cooling System) - a cutting-edge liquid-based cooling solution that utilizes a microchannel structure to significantly enhance coolant flow and expand the heat-exchange surface area. This design delivers performance that far exceeds that of conventional water-cooling systems. MHS is actively validating MACS technology through expanding collaboration with Korean AI semiconductor fabless companies, including Furiosa AI and Rebellion AI, positioning itself at the forefront of datacenter cooling innovation. 'No matter how advanced AI semiconductors become, without effective cooling, they simply cannot perform at scale,' stated Jason Lim, CEO of MHS. 'System availability ultimately depends on cooling technology,' he added. Lim emphasized that modern AI processors typically generate heat far exceeding one kilowatt, underscoring the necessity of liquid-cooling methods. While immersion cooling—fully submerging servers in dielectric fluid—is under consideration industry-wide, Lim cautioned that its 'high infrastructure cost' and 'management complexity' make it impractical for many datacenter operators. In contrast, MACS utilizes narrow (tens to hundreds of micrometers) microchannels, optimized flow paths, and capillary-driven fluid dynamics to achieve effective heat removal even at modest flow rates. Lim pointed to NVIDIA's AI H100 processor—which dissipates approximately 700W—and noted that future generations ('Blackwell,' 'Rubin,' and 'Panther') could generate heat loads up to 1 kW per chip, intensifying the demand for highly effective and reliable cooling solutions. In May, despite a global slowdown in venture capital investment, MHS secured Series A funding from WeVentures and Gyeongnam Venture Investment to accelerate the commercialization of MACS and expand R&D capacity. With MACS poised to meet the rising demand for datacenter cooling, MHS plans to expand its international presence and explore partnerships with global AI infrastructure leaders. Media Contact Company Name: MHS Co., Ltd. Contact Person: Chris Oh(Head of Sales) Email: Send Email Phone: +82-10-2731-5730 Country: South Korea Website: Source: MHS Co., Ltd.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
FuriosaAI secures $125m in Series C bridge round
South Korean semiconductor startup FuriosaAI has raised $125m in Series C bridge funding. The new investment increases the company's total funding to $246m and places its valuation at $735m. The financing round included contributions from both new and existing investors, including the Korea Development Bank, Industrial Bank of Korea, Keistone Partners, PI Partners, and Kakao Investment. Founded in 2017, FuriosaAI is building new type of AI chip for data centres and enterprise customers. Earlier in 2025, the company opted to continue its independent growth by turning down an $800m acquisition offer from Meta Platforms. FuriosaAI will use the new funding to scale up the production of its flagship AI chip RNGD (pronounced Renegade). The company also plans to initiate the development of its next-generation AI chip. Recently, LG AI Research adopted the RNGD chip for its EXAONE foundation models. FuriosaAI CEO June Paik said: 'LG AI Research's adoption of RNGD has validated our chip's performance and superior energy efficiency. 'Now we are scaling RNGD production globally to meet growing customer demand and applying learnings in the development of our next-generation chip.' Alongside, FuriosaAI has expanded its executive team by announcing the appointment of Jeehoon Kang as chief research officer and Youngjin Cho as vice president of hardware. Kakao Investment CEO Do-Young Kim said: 'FuriosaAI has built a compelling alternative to GPUs for AI inference. Their Tensor Contraction Processor chip architecture delivers the performance and power efficiency that is critical for the next wave of AI applications. 'They have the right technology and the right team to transform AI hardware, and we are excited to help fuel their growth.' "FuriosaAI secures $125m in Series C bridge round" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Business Wire
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
FuriosaAI Closes $125M Investment Round to Scale Production of Next-Gen AI Inference Chip
SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FuriosaAI, a semiconductor company building a new foundation for AI compute, today announced it has completed a $125 million Series C bridge funding round. The investment continues a period of significant momentum for Furiosa as global demand for high-performance, efficient AI infrastructure soars. The world urgently needs new solutions to scale AI compute, and we believe Furiosa is one of the very few companies with the proven architecture innovation and software maturity to deliver. The company recently secured a major design win with LG AI Research, which has adopted Furiosa's RNGD (pronounced 'Renegade') AI accelerator after it achieved 2.25x better LLM inference performance per watt vs. GPUs. To steer its next phase of growth, the company has also strengthened its executive team with two industry leaders: Jeehoon Kang, a renowned expert in parallel systems from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), has joined as Chief Research Officer to lead compiler and software architecture. Youngjin Cho, a silicon and SoC expert who was previously a Corporate Vice President at Samsung Electronics, has been appointed Vice President of Hardware to accelerate the company's chip development. A former Visiting Scholar at Stanford, Dr. Cho holds a PhD from Seoul National University. Despite unprecedented demand for AI compute, enterprises are hitting a wall trying to scale AI applications because of the unsustainable power consumption, operating costs, and infrastructure limitations of legacy GPU-based hardware. Furiosa was founded to solve this problem by reimagining the AI hardware and software stack from first principles. 'AI today is dependent on a broken business model, where the infrastructure costs and constraints of power-hungry GPUs are a critical, rapidly worsening roadblock. We're committed to solving this so that AI is truly sustainable – not just environmentally but economically as well,' said Furiosa co-founder and CEO June Paik. 'This funding allows us to deliver a new foundation for AI that is both powerful and efficient. We are grateful for the confidence our investors have shown in FuriosaAI and our vision to make AI sustainable, and thus accessible for everyone,' Paik added. 'With two world-class technical leaders – Professor Kang in compiler and software architecture and Dr. Cho in silicon hardware – joining Furiosa, we will scale RNGD production globally and accelerate the development of our next-generation chip.' The funding round was supported by a number of new and existing investors, including the Korea Development Bank, Industrial Bank of Korea, Keistone Partners, and Kakao Investment. 'The world urgently needs new solutions to scale AI compute, and we believe Furiosa is one of the very few companies with the proven architecture innovation and software maturity to deliver,' said Yoon D. Kang, CEO of PI Partners. 'With the success of Furiosa's RNGD chip and the significant design win with LG AI Research, June and his leadership team have demonstrated their ability to deliver on their audacious vision for transforming AI computing. We are thrilled to deepen our partnership as they enter their next phase of growth.' "FuriosaAI has built an exciting alternative to GPUs for AI inference,' said Kakao Investment CEO Do-Young Kim. 'Their architecture delivers the performance and power efficiency that is critical for the next wave of AI applications. They have the right technology and the right team to transform AI hardware, and we are excited to help fuel their growth." The new funding will be used to accelerate mass production of RNGD to support global enterprise customers and lay the groundwork for development of Furiosa's next-generation chip. Since the company's founding in 2017, Furiosa has raised a total of $246 million from investors and is currently valued at $735 million. (Note: All dollar figures are approximate, based on transactions in Korean Won.) About FuriosaAI FuriosaAI is a semiconductor company building a new type of AI chip for data centers and enterprise customers. Its mission is to build a hardware and software stack that makes AI computing sustainable, giving everyone on Earth access to powerful AI. For more information, please visit
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
FuriosaAI Raises $125 Million in Bid to Become Nvidia Challenger
FuriosaAI Inc., the Seoul-based semiconductor startup seeking to challenge Nvidia Corp., secured $125 million in a financing round to accelerate production of its artificial intelligence chip. The round exceeded its target of about $80 million and drew investors including the Korea Development Bank, Industrial Bank of Korea, Keistone Partners and Kakao Investment, the company said in a statement. FuriosaAI's latest valuation stands at $735 million.
