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South Korea ’s fabless AI chip industry hear a slew of fundraising events over the last brace of years as demand for hardware to power AI lotion rocket , and it seems the space is already consolidate . Two of the country ’s prominent fabless AI chip startup , RebellionsandSapeon , have agree to merge , the company said on Wednesday .
The amalgamation is a strategic move byRebellionsandSapeonaimed at leading the fabless AI fleck market in South Korea to take on global rival like Nvidia . Fabless chip makers focalize on research and evolution , pattern and merchandising of chips , rather than manufacturing .
The unified entity could go public in the next two to three years , according to two manufacture informant conversant with the ship’s company ’ plan who involve not to be named .
The company said in a affirmation that they see the next two to three yr as a “ fortunate hour ” for South Korea to win the world-wide AI chip marketplace . In addition , due to the apace increase need for neuronic processing units ( NPUs ) , they mean to beef up their NPU business after the amalgamation .
Indeed , the great deal comes at a polar minute in the global microprocessor chip industry .
Nvidia currently dominate this market , account for more than 97%of the global market for specialized AI chips , thanks to its early leap into providing data middle services and software program to serve other companies build large linguistic communication models and power AI applications . Still , for companies like Rebellions and Sapeon , there is enough earth to be gained by be active now : Compute is getting costlier as demand has shot up andchip availability has declined , and AI troupe are already adjudicate to go against away from their dependence on Nvidia for ironware .
Applelast calendar month saidit would be using its own chips to power its AI information center , and others likeGoogle , AmazonandMicrosoftare already building their own hardware for AI applications . Meanwhile , Intel , AMD , Google , Meta , ARM , Broadcom and others havebanded togetherto develop a standard to associate AI particle accelerator chips used in servers , in a move going straight off against Nvidia , which has its own mechanism for connecting GPUs in servers .
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Rebellions and Sapeon did not disclose the merger ratio , but said they will before long begin due industriousness , which will take about a calendar month , and aim to shut the dealings in the second one-half of 2024 . The Rebellions team will lead the management of the business concern , and all employees of both companies will be joining the new entity . rebellion has 130 staff , and Sapeon has more than 100 employees in South Korea and the U.S.
Two of South Korea ’s big telecommunications companies , SK Telecom and KT , will uphold as stakeholders in the merged entity , as will the secondly largest computer memory chip God Almighty in the world , SK Hynix . Sapeon is backed by SK Telecom and SK Hynix , and Rebellions is owned by KT .
rebellion substantiate to TechCrunch that it will proceed its partnership with Samsung Electronics , which competes with SK Hynix in the semiconductor gadget space , for on-going task , admit Rebel . to begin with this twelvemonth , Rebellions told TechCrunchthat the startup ’s latest AI silicon chip , Rebel , would use Samsung ’s 4 - nanometer fabrication process and be deployed in Samsung’sHBM3Ememory chips , which are used for build up and control tumid language good example .
Meanwhile , KT in 2023 contain Atom , Rebellions ’ information center - focused AI chip , into its cloud - based NPU infrastructure . Rebellions enounce it would manufacture this particular NPU chip using Samsung ’s 5 - nanometer fictionalization process . Atom is design for data center and language fashion model of up to 7 billion parameters , while Rebel targets larger models .
The announcement comes roughly four months afterRebellions lift a $ 124 million Series Bthat valued it at just about $ 658 million .
Founded in 2016 and spun out in 2022 from SK Telecom , Sapeon builds NPU hardware and full - stack software . Last November , the company launched a 7 - nanometer AI chip , X330 NPU , for autonomous vehicles , and earlier this year , it said it would develop an on - gadget AI chiptargeting the edge computing grocery store . Sapeon last raisedmore than $ 45 million in a Series Ain August 2023 , progress to a rating of over $ 380 million .
