Fabless startup Rebellions raises $50 mn in Series A

South Korea’s leading fabless startup Rebellions Inc. announced Friday it raised 62 billion won ($50 million) in Series A or the first round of significant institutional funding. 

The AI accelerator maker is valued at 350 billion won in less than two years of its founding.

Pavilion Capital, which is wholly-owned by Temasek Holdings, became the first non-Korean institutional investor in the startup. 

Korea Development Bank, Mirae Asset Venture Investment Co., SV Investment, IMM Investment Corp., KB Investment Co., KT Investment, and Mirae Asset Capital invested in this round. 

Previous investors into the early stage startup, from Seed to Pre-A, also doubled down on their trust in the company's potential. They include: Kakao Ventures, GU Equity Partners, and Seoul Techno Holdings, Inc. 

The company founded in September 2020 now boasts an accumulated funding amount of 100 billion won ($80 million). Its valuation tripled from the Pre-Series A figure of 110 billion won last July to 350 billion won during this round. 

The company’s strength lies in its top-tier talents.

Founder and Chief Executive Park Sung-hyun was a quant developer at global investment bank Morgan Stanely and Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX.

The company's Chief Technology Officer Oh Jin-wook previously designed AI chips at IBM and the Chief Product Officer Kim Hyo-eun developed deep learning technology at the AI medical device maker Lunit.

Rebellions also hired Kim Hyun-sook, a former chief researcher at Samsung System LSI, to enhance its software capability, under the logic that software design is as important as creating sound hardware to enhance AI chip performance.

Veteran developers from England-based semiconductor maker ARM Holdings, Samsung Electronics Co., SK Hynix have joined the startup.

Last November, Rebellions succeeded in creating a microchip that speeds up trading by a few microseconds -- a huge difference in the world of finance. By that point, the startup was only a year and three months old. 

The company’s AI accelerator Ion turned out to be 30% faster at processing than Intel Corp.’s Habana Goya. Not only that, Ion’s electric consumption rate is much lower than that of its Intel counterpart. 

Prior to Ion, Habana Goya was the fastest AI accelerator in this field. 

Rebellions plans to use the fresh injection of funds to expand its production line and set up an office in the United States.

The funds will also be used for recruiting talent for overseas expansion. 

Last year, the startup hired Lee Te-Won, the former VP and President of Qualcomm Korea. Lee is a Fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a leading organization of technical professionals based in the US.

Write to Joo-Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.