On Sunday (August 18th), Sapeon Korea and Rebellion, two domestic artificial intelligence (AI) chip manufacturers in South Korea, signed a formal merger agreement.
The value of the new company after the merger is expected to exceed 1 trillion won (743.8 million US dollars), and it will become a unicorn enterprise representing the Korean artificial intelligence chip industry. It will have stronger competitiveness in the global market and eventually be able to compete with Nvidia, AMD and other giants.
Enhance competitiveness
Sapeon Korea is an artificial intelligence chip processor subsidiary of SK Telecom. In 2020, the company developed the first AI chip for data centers in China - the new generation X330 series AI chip, which uses TSMC's 7-nanometer process technology and supports inference of large models.
Sapeon's shareholders include SK Telecom, the largest telecommunications company in South Korea, and SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip manufacturer.
Rebellions is a fabless artificial intelligence chip startup founded in 2020. Last year, Rebellions developed an artificial intelligence on-chip system called ATOM that supports large-scale language models.
In July of this year, Rebellions also received $15 million in investment from Wa'ed Ventures, Saudi Aramco's venture capital firm, bringing its total funding to over $225 million.
According to insiders from both companies, the merged entity will be named Rebellions. The original Rebellions will be responsible for the management of the merged company, while SK Telecom will continue to support the expansion plans of the new company as a strategic investor.
In fact, as early as June this year, the two companies stated that they were seeking to merge in order to enhance their competitiveness in the global artificial intelligence chip market. SK Telecom is the main promoter of the plan, claiming that it will start a comprehensive "war" of Korean AI chips.
In April, the South Korean government announced that it would invest 9.4 trillion Korean won (approximately 6.9 billion US dollars) in the field of artificial intelligence chips by 2027 to maintain South Korea's leading position. This provides government level support for the artificial intelligence chip industry.
After the latest merger agreement was signed, Park Sung hyun, CEO of Rebellions, said, "Investors and major business partners from both sides believe that in order to achieve a leap in the artificial intelligence chip industry, the whole of South Korea is making every effort, and therefore have shown great determination and support, and have reached a merger agreement
It is worth mentioning that Park Sung hyun will become the CEO of the new entity after the merger.
Yoo Young sang, CEO of SK Telecom, said that through this contract, "we will be able to significantly enhance the global competitiveness of AI chips, which will be one of the three major areas of the artificial intelligence value chain constructed by SK Telecom