Rebellions raises $124 mn to co-develop AI chip with Samsung

South Korean fabless artificial intelligence chip startup Rebellions Inc.’s plan to co-develop the next-generation AI chip with the world’s No. 1 memory chip maker Samsung Electronics Co. is expected to gather speed after successfully raising $124 million from multiple investors. 

The three-year-old startup said on Tuesday that it raised $124 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total fundraising to date since its inception in 2020 to over $200 million, the largest fundraising ever of a Korean semiconductor startup. 

With the latest funding, the startup is a step closer to becoming Korea’s first fabless semiconductor unicorn as its valuation was estimated at 870 billion won ($654 million) in the latest funding round, more than doubling its Series A funding round in June 2022.

The Korean telecom and IT giant KT Group-backed startup's existing strategic backers KT Corp. and KT Investment were joined by their affiliate KT Cloud to together chip in 33 billion won during its Series B funding. In 2022, the two KT companies jointly invested 33.5 billion won.

The remaining funds in the latest round were injected by new notable investors Shinhan Venture Investment, Koreyla Capital from France and DGDV from Japan, as well as famous incumbent investors such as Temasek’s Pavilion Capital and Korean state-owned policy bank Korea Development Bank.

Other incumbent and novel investors joined in, including Noh& Partners, KB Securities, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, IMM Investment, Oasis PE and more.

The Korean fabless AI chip startup expects the new funds to expedite its joint project with Samsung Electronics to develop the next-generation AI chip, dubbed Rebel, designed to run large language models (LLM) of up to 100 billion parameters.

With the investment, the company also plans to add more ATOM chip customers, mostly data centers, at home and abroad.

The ATOM chips are already used in KT’s LLM Mi:dm and the startup plans to mass-produce them this year.

“This investment is a robust foundation for expanding our global presence, particularly in markets like the US and Japan, and will accelerate the pace of our global business strategies and next-gen product development,” Shin Sung-kyue, Rebellions' chief financial officer, said in a statement.

AI CHIP WAR

In October last year, Rebellions and Samsung Electronics announced their strategic partnership in the development of AI chips, demand for which is soaring in line with the fast adaptation of generative AI across the board since the sensational debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022.

The AI chip market is currently dominated by global leader Nvidia Corp., while major generative AI players, including pioneer OpenAI, are seeking to produce their own AI chips.

Reflecting the growing demand for AI chips, Rebellions’ crosstown rivals have also succeeded in raising funds in recent months despite the ongoing worldwide funding drought.

Korean fabless AI chip designer FuriosaAI Inc. raised an additional 80 billion won late last year, when Sapeon also completed its Series A funding, allowing it to raise about 70 billion won in total.

Korean AI chip startups are striving to develop AI chips that could outperform Nvidia’s products but at more affordable prices. Korean AI startups are valued highly on expectations for their successful inroads into the global AI chip market, industry experts said. 

KOREA’S RISING STAR IN AI CHIP DESIGN

Rebellions will produce its next-generation AI chip Rebel by using Samsung’s cutting-edge 4-nanometer fabrication process. The chip will feature the Korean memory giant’s HBM3E memory technology, which plays a key role in boosting AI chip performance, according to the startup.

It aims to complete the development of Rebel before the end of this year.

The Korean fabless AI chip startup has emerged as a notable AI chip design house after it beat much bigger rivals in a chip performance test known as MLPerf in April last year.

In the test, Rebellions’ AI chip for data centers, ATOM, performed the best, proving itself fastest in processing large language and vision models.

ATOM’s processing speed was up to 3.4 times faster than the same class chips by Qualcomm and Nvidia, according to the company. This means that ChatGPT operated on an ATOM-fitted computer delivers the quickest answers to its users.

Rebellions produced ATOM chips using Samsung Electronics’ 5-nanometer node earlier last year.

In September last year, the Korean AI chip startup also forged a partnership with US tech giant IBM in the development of generative AI technology, including a test of ATOM on IBM’s systems to ensure the AI chip’s performance and product reliability at the server level.

ATOM is designed for LLMs of up to 7 billion parameters.

Write to Joo-Wan Kim and Ji-Eun Jeong at kjwan@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.