Rebel-Quad is Rebellions’ second generation product and consists of four Rebel AI chips. South Korean company Rebellions is trying to compete with companies like Nvidia in AI chips.
rebellion
South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions announced Monday that it has raised $400 million to expand into the U.S. market ahead of a public listing.
Mirae Asset Financial Group and the Korean National Growth Fund, the Korean government’s investment arm, led the round, valuing Rebellions at $2.34 billion.
Rebellions is one of many semiconductor startups looking to capitalize on demand for AI chips and investor appetite for companies that are helping build out the technology’s infrastructure.
Rebellions CEO Sunghyun Park told CNBC that the funding will be used to expand into the United States.
“Our main target right now is large research labs,” Park said, naming companies such as: meta Target customers include xAI rather than hyperscalers such as: Amazon and microsoft.
Park added that Rebellions is currently in active proof-of-concept testing with customers in the United States.
The CEO also said that the company is preparing for an initial public offering, as previously reported by CNBC, but did not provide details on the timeline or location.
AI inference focus
Rather than training AI applications, Rebellions’ chips focus on inference, the process of running AI applications. meanwhile Nvidiagraphics processing units (GPUs) are the gold standard for training AI models, and there is a growing focus on chips that are more energy efficient and can execute inference processes quickly.
Rebellions sells server systems comprised of Rebel100 NPU chips.
The South Korean startup competes not only with Nvidia but also with a growing list of other startups, from Cerebras to Groq, a company whose technology Nvidia licenses.
“When it comes to just inference, our chip…offers much higher energy efficiency and performance at the same time,” Park said, speaking about what differentiates Rebellions from its competitors.
Park declined to release sales figures, but said the company has a “strong revenue pipeline.” However, he noted that one of the challenges at the moment is securing the supply of memory chips.
These types of semiconductors are manufactured by Samsung, SK Hynix, and microndemand is high but supply is short, leading to an unprecedented increase in component prices.
“It’s not that easy to get memory, but our demand is huge,” Park said. He added that Rebellions is “in the best position” to acquire memory supplies compared to other startups because Samsung and SK Hynix, two of the world’s largest memory manufacturers, are investors.
korean chip bet
The rebellion is a central part of the South Korean government’s attempt to strengthen the country’s semiconductor sector.
Last year, the government launched the K-Nvidia initiative, a plan to invest government funds in companies designing advanced AI chips.
The Korea National Growth Fund, one of Rebellions’ investors in the latest funding round, contributed 250 billion Korean won ($166 million), the government announced on Friday.
Samsung, SK Hynix, and Saudi oil giant Aramco are all investors in the rebels.
