S.Korea names 20 fabless firms to receive government support

South Korea is set to bolster support for local fabless companies, which design and sell chips, with an aim to grow the firms into global semiconductor industry leaders.  

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy named the 20 fabless firms up for support on Monday and pledged aid for areas including technology development, prototype manufacturing, finance, local and overseas marketing as well as training.

Of the 20 firms, 10 were recognized as having high growth potential. The 10 companies are: microcontroller unit designer ABOV Semiconductor Co.; near-field communication (NFC) chip designer 3ALogics Inc.; communication chip firm Point2 Technology; mobile device chip company Hideep; ADTechnology, a supplier to Samsung Foundry; Chips & Media Inc., a silicon intellectual property (IP) firm; Jeju Semiconductor Corp., a chip designer for Internet of Things (IoTs); Fadu, a supplier of solid state drives (SSDs) to Facebook owner Meta; Dongwoon Anatech, a camera autofocus chip designer; and Pixelplus Co., a sensor chip design firm.

The other 10 fabless companies, under seven years old, gained recognition as promising firms. They are: artificial intelligence-powered chip designers Mobilint; Supergate and Openedges Technology Inc.; display chip design firm Sapien Semiconductors; Qualitas Semiconductor Co., an on-chip interconnect scheme provider; EM Coretech, an electromagnetic interference filter developer; TechwidU Co., a semiconductor IP provider; PowerLSI, a system semiconductor firm; Solidvue Inc., a chip designer for self-driving car sensors; and Haechitech, a 3D sensor solution provider.

The 20 companies were selected based on their core technologies, growth strategies, employment of experts and business philosophy, the ministry said

Korea has the world’s top two memory chip makers – Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. But the country accounted for only around 1% of the global fabless market last year, while top 30 companies like Nvidia Corp. and Qualcomm Technologies Inc. made up around 90%.

Write to Sul-Gi Lee at surugi@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.