Sapeon was spun off from South Korea’s SK Telecom in 2022 and is elevating exterior funding. The firm is trying to tackle Nvidia within the space of manmade intelligence chips.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
BARCELONA, Spain — Sapeon, a South Korean synthetic intelligence chip startup headquartered in California, is elevating a funding spherical that places its valuation above $400 million, its CEO advised CNBC.
The startup is backed by huge South Korean corporations SK Telecom, memory-chip maker SK Hynix and SK Square, an funding firm spun off of SK Telecom.
Sapeon designs synthetic intelligence semiconductors for information facilities, for instance these run by cloud computing corporations. These AI chips are required for AI functions that require big quantities of knowledge processing.
Currently, U.S. agency Nvidia dominates this market. But a variety of established gamers corresponding to AMD and startups like Sapeon, need to problem Nvidia.
“AI solutions will grow a lot thanks to the evolution of AI services like ChatGPT,” Soojung Ryu, CEO of Sapeon, advised CNBC in an interview on the Mobile World Congress that aired Wednesday.
ChatGPT is the viral chatbot developed by OpenAI. It has brought about a stir within the tech world, with giants from Google to Chinese agency Baidu scrambling to launch their very own rivals. Technology executives say ChatGPT has put AI functions on the map.
Analysts at Bernstein anticipate ChatGPT to be a multi-billion greenback boon for chipmakers trying to gas these AI fashions.
“We would like build this kind of system (AI chips) to have an opportunity for the business,” Ryu mentioned.
Sapeon was created in 2016 inside SK Telecom, certainly one of South Korea’s greatest telecommunications corporations. SK Telecom then spun out the agency final yr and raised exterior funding.
Ryu mentioned the corporate is at the moment elevating cash at a valuation of $400 million.
South Korean semiconductor corporations together with Samsung and SK Hynix have sometimes been sturdy in reminiscence chips that go into units like PCs. Sapeon is amongst one of many first corporations out of South Korea to attempt to crack the AI chip market.
Ryu mentioned that Sapeon is concentrating on the U.S. market which might pit it towards Nvidia. When requested if Sapeon can problem Nvidia, Ryu answered “yes.”
Currently, Sapeon has one chip in the marketplace known as the X220. It is constructed on so-called 28-nanometer know-how. The nanometer determine refers back to the measurement of every particular person transistor on a chip. The smaller the transistor, the extra of them could be packed onto a single semiconductor. Typically, a discount in nanometer measurement can yield extra highly effective and environment friendly chips.
Ryu mentioned the corporate will launch a 7-nanometer AI chip this yr and it will likely be manufactured by TSMC, the world’s greatest contract chipmaker. That would deliver it nearer to the present know-how in the marketplace.
Source: www.cnbc.com