The Insurgent-Quad is the second-generation product from Rebellions and is made up of 4 Insurgent AI chips. Rebellions, a South Korean agency, is trying to rival corporations like Nvidia in AI chips.
Rebellions
South Korean synthetic intelligence chip startup Rebellions has raised cash from tech big Samsung and is focusing on a funding spherical of as much as $200 million forward of a public itemizing, the corporate’s administration advised CNBC on Tuesday.
Final 12 months, Rebellions merged with one other startup in South Korea referred to as Sapeon, making a agency that’s being positioned as one of many nation’s promising rivals to Nvidia.
Rebellions is at the moment elevating cash and is focusing on funding of between $150 million and $200 million, Sungkyue Shin, chief monetary officer of the startup, advised CNBC on Tuesday.
Samsung’s funding in Rebellions final week was a part of that, Shin mentioned, although he declined to say how a lot the tech big poured in.
Since its founding in 2020, Rebellions has raised $220 million, Shin added.
The present funding spherical is ongoing and Shin mentioned Rebellions is speaking to its present buyers in addition to buyers in Korea and globally to take part within the capital elevate. Rebellions has some huge buyers, together with South Korean chip big SK Hynix, telecommunication corporations SK Telecom and Korea Telecom, and Saudi Arabian oil big Aramco.
Rebellions was final valued at $1 billion. Shin mentioned the present spherical of funding would push the valuation over $1 billion however declined to offer particular determine.
Rebellions is aiming for an preliminary public providing as soon as this funding spherical has closed.
“Our grasp plan goes public,” Shin mentioned.
Rebellions designs chips which might be targeted on AI inferencing fairly than coaching. Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI mannequin interprets reside knowledge to give you a consequence, very like the solutions which might be produced by in style chatbots.
With the backing of main South Korean corporations and buyers, Rebellions is hoping to make a world play the place it is going to look to problem Nvidia and AMD in addition to a slew of different startups within the inferencing area.
Samsung collaboration
Rebellions has been working with Samsung to carry its second-generation chip, Insurgent, to market. Samsung owns a chip manufacturing enterprise, also referred to as foundry. 4 Insurgent chips are put collectively to make the Insurgent-Quad, the product that Rebellions will ultimately promote. A Rebellions spokesperson mentioned the chip will likely be launched later this 12 months.
The funding will partly go towards Rebellions’ product growth. Rebellions is at the moment testing its chip which can ultimately be produced on a bigger scale by Samsung.
“Preliminary outcomes have been very promising,” Sunghyun Park, CEO of Rebellions, advised CNBC on Tuesday.
Park mentioned Samsung invested in Rebellions partly due to the the nice outcomes that the chip has to date produced.
Samsung is manufacturing Rebellions’ semiconductor utilizing its 4 nanometer course of, which is among the many modern chipmaking nodes. For comparability, Nvidia’s present Blackwell chips use the 4 nanometer course of from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Rebellions may even use excessive bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) in its chips. One of these reminiscence is stacked and is required to deal with giant knowledge processing hundreds. Rebellions has not chosen an HBM vendor.
That would transform a strategic win for Samsung, which is a really distant second to TSMC by way of market share within the foundry enterprise. Samsung has been trying to enhance its chipmaking division. Samsung Electronics just lately entered right into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to Tesla.
If Rebellions manages to search out a big buyer base, this might give Samsung a serious buyer for its foundry enterprise.
Correction: This story was up to date to replicate that Rebellions has not chosen an HBM vendor.
