South Korean fabless AI chip startup, Rebellions, has successfully closed a Series B funding round, raising $124 million (165 billion KRW). The primary goal of this funding is to support the development of the company’s third AI chip, named Rebel. Additionally, the startup plans to utilize the capital to scale up the production of its data center-focused chip, Atom, and for expanding its workforce through new hires.
Key Takeaway
Rebellions has secured
24 million in Series B funding to develop its new AI chip, Rebel, and to ramp up production of its data center-focused chip, Atom, as well as for hiring.
Series B Funding and Valuation
The Series B funding round has placed a value of approximately $658 million (880 billion KRW) on Rebellions, post-money. This latest funding round was oversubscribed, surpassing its initial target of $90 million. Since its inception in 2020, Rebellions has raised a total of around $210 million.
Investors and Industry Landscape
KT, a prominent South Korean telecom giant, led the Series B round as a strategic investor. Previous backers such as Temasek’s Pavilion Capital and Korea Development Bank, along with new investors including Korelya Capital and DG Daiwa Ventures, also participated in this funding round.
The funding comes at a crucial juncture in the chip industry, particularly in the realm of AI chips. While Nvidia currently leads the AI chip market, other players are actively seeking innovative breakthroughs to address challenges related to data processing and high costs in AI applications.
Partnership with Samsung
Rebellions had previously announced its collaboration with Samsung Electronics to develop the Rebel chip. The two companies aim to complete the development of Rebel by the end of this year and commence mass production in 2025. Rebel is set to target the generative AI market, specifically focusing on large language models (LLMs) and hyperscalers.
Rebellions’ CFO, Sungkyue Shin, emphasized that Rebel will utilize Samsung Electronics’ 4-nanometer fabrication process and will be deployed in Samsung’s advanced memory chip technology, HBM3E, designed to handle high bandwidth memory for large language models.
Other Chip Models
In addition to Rebel, Rebellions’ existing chip models include Atom and Ion. Atom, designed for data centers and language models of up to 7 billion parameters, has already been installed by KT in its cloud-based neural processing units (NPU) infrastructure. Meanwhile, Ion, tailored for edge computing, is currently undergoing qualification testing in the U.S. and is anticipated to find applications in financial services, particularly in stock prediction and trading applications.
Rebellions’ CEO, Sunghyun Park, and the company’s co-founders, established the AI chip startup in 2020. The recent funding and partnership with Samsung mark significant milestones in Rebellions’ journey to advance AI chip technology.
