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BARCELONA, Spain — South Korean artificial intelligence chip startup Sapeon, headquartered in California, is in a funding round valued at over $400 million, its CEO told CNBC.
The startup is backed by South Korean giant SK Telecom, memory chip maker SK Hynix, and SK Square, an investment company spun off from SK Telecom.
Sapeon designs artificial intelligence semiconductors such as data centers operated by cloud computing companies. These AI chips are required for AI applications that require large amounts of data processing.
Currently a U.S. corporation NVIDIA dominate this market.But many established players like AMD Startups like Sapeon are trying to challenge Nvidia.
Sapeon CEO Soojung Ryu said in an interview at Mobile World Congress on Wednesday, “AI solutions will grow significantly thanks to the evolution of AI services like ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is a viral chatbot developed by OpenAI. Giants from Google to China’s Baidu are scrambling to release their competitors, causing ripples in the IT industry. A tech executive says ChatGPT has put his AI application on the map.
Bernstein analysts expect ChatGPT to yield billions of dollars for chip makers looking to power these AI models.
“We would like to build such a system (AI chip) and get business opportunities,” says Ryu.
Sapeon was founded in 2016 within SK Telecom, one of South Korea’s largest telecommunications companies. SK Telecom then spun out the company last year to attract outside investment.
Ryu said the company is currently raising capital at a valuation of $400 million.
Korean semiconductor companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix have strengths in memory chips that are typically embedded in devices such as PCs. Sapeon is one of the first companies to try to enter the AI chip market in South Korea.
Ryu said Sapeon is targeting the US market to compete with Nvidia. When Sapeon was asked if he could challenge Nvidia, Ryu replied “yes.”
Sapeon currently has one chip on the market called the X220. It is built on the so-called 28-nanometer technology. The nanometer number refers to the size of the individual transistors on the chip. The smaller the transistors, the more transistors can be packed into a single semiconductor. Typically, nanometer size reduction can yield more powerful and efficient chips.
Ryu said the company will launch a 7-nanometer AI chip this year and will be manufactured by TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker. .