ASICLAND, TSMC’s sole Korean partner, eyes 2023 IPO

ASICLAND Co. is the only South Korean semiconductor design house for the world’s largest foundry TSMC Co., which manufactures chips for about 70% of South Korea’s fabless companies.

As one of the Taiwanese company's eight business partners in the world, the Korean startup is sometimes the target of criticism that it might be doing good only for TSMC, the key foundry rival of Samsung Electronics Co.

But the chip design house’s founder and Chief Executive Lee Jongmin dismissed such criticism as nonsense.

“About 70% of South Korea’s fabless companies use TSMC’s foundry process,” he told The Korea Economic Daily in an interview on Wednesday.

“ASICLAND has been making substantial contributions to the development of South Korea’s semiconductor industry.”

Prior to establishing ASICLAND in 2016, the CEO worked at then Hynix Inc. and left the world’s No. 2 memory chipmaker after it was spun off from Hyundai Group and sold to SK. He then joined a fabless company that closed down after a few years.

“I had no choice but to challenge myself to start a business … It was almost like destiny. I made a decision with like-minded juniors to do a design.”

In 2019, ASICLAND was chosen to be one of TSMC’s official business partners. It designs semiconductor chips for fabless and original equipment manufacturers.

It offers both front-end and back-end design services in a turn-key project, covering the whole process of chip designs from wafer manufacturing to packaging and testing.

That sets it apart from other semiconductor design houses, most of which provide back-end design services.

Lee said the company is serving as a bridge between the Taiwanese foundry and domestic fabless companies.

“Chips designed by domestic fabless, research institutes and universities have no choice but to use TSMC,” Lee said, adding that TSMC meets their demand for the low-end fabrication process, whereas Samsung focuses on high-end processes.

“If ASICLAND goes out of business, there will be no bridge to connect them with TSMC,” the CEO said.

The chip design house boasts multiple intellectual property rights.

Semiconductor chips it designs range from those for artificial intelligence; the country’s first back-end and mass production architectures for data centers; and AI processors to automation platforms for the central processing unit’s server process.  

With about 150 employees, it claims 70 fabless companies in South Korea as customers. It runs an office in Vietnam as well.

As a first step toward overseas expansion, ASICLAND has embarked on the process of an initial public offering.

It plans to apply for the preliminary nod on its IPO with an aim to list within the year.

Its 2023 sales are expected to nearly double to 120 billion won ($90 million) from the previous year’s 66 billion won. In 2021, it posted 45.3 billion won in sales.

Write to Kyung-Joo Kang at qurasoha@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.