Rebellions, Samsung to jointly develop new AI chip

South Korea's AI semiconductor startup Rebellions announced a strategic partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. to co-develop their next-generation AI chip, Rebel on Thursday. 

The chip will be produced using Samsung's cutting-edge 4-nanometer fabrication process and will feature Samsung Electronics' HBM3E memory technology.

The goal is to target the emerging generative AI market, which has been growing rapidly since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November last year. Rebellions aims to complete the development of Rebel by the second half of next year.

While most AI semiconductors in South Korea are produced through collaborations with overseas design houses and foundries, Rebel by Rebellions stands as a unique example where both design and manufacturing take place domestically.

Rebellions released its AI chip Atom, a system-on-chip (SoC) designed for data centers and large companies in the cloud sector. The AI chip startup started production of Atom with Samsung’s 5-nanometer fabrication process earlier this year. 

"Samsung regards the system semiconductor, particularly the AI semiconductor market, as a core future business," Samsung Electronics Foundry Business Vice President Jung Ki-bong stated. "Through collaboration with Rebellions, we aim to develop the domestic system semiconductor ecosystem further."

"We are grateful for Samsung Foundry's proactive partnership, and through the successful development and production of Rebel, we are determined to demonstrate the global competitiveness of South Korean products in the system semiconductor sector." CEO of Rebellions Park Sung-hyun commented.

Write to Joo-Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com