This article was displayed on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove (MM) site at 3:42 p.m. on May 28, 2026.
Artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor fabless (design specialist) HyperAccel is on the verge of securing a new investment of 150 billion won. It is understood that existing financial investors (FI), including venture capital (VC) Korea Investment Partners, have decided to make sizable follow-on investments.
According to the VC industry on the 28th, HyperAccel recently began wrapping up a 150 billion won Series B funding round. It comes about three months after it began sounding out demand in March. Reports say existing FIs have decided to make large follow-on investments.
First, Korea Investment Partners has stepped up as the lead investor and decided on an additional investment in HyperAccel. Korea Investment Partners took part in HyperAccel's 55 billion won Series A round in 2024, becoming a major shareholder.
In addition, BonAngels Venture Partners, KB Investment, and Mirae Asset Venture Investment are understood to be pursuing follow-on investments. A VC industry official said, "As investment demand has poured in, there is a mood of not recruiting new FIs."
HyperAccel, a startup that develops AI accelerators—logic semiconductors that speed up AI computation—launched in January 2023. It drew attention from the outset after Joo-Young Kim, a Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) professor who previously worked at Microsoft (MS), founded the company.
HyperAccel is touting as its flagship product the LPU (LLM Processing Unit), an accelerator specialized for large language model (LLM) inference. The LPU is considered a semiconductor optimized to boost the response generation speed of Generative AI such as ChatGPT.
Its key edge is cost-effectiveness. Designed to use low-power DRAM (LPDDR) instead of high bandwidth memory (HBM), it aims to deliver performance comparable to existing graphics processing units (GPUs) while achieving one-tenth the price and one-third the power.
Securing strategic investors (SI) also spurred follow-on moves by existing FIs. The company began targeting the business-to-business (B2B) market last year, including teaming up with LG Electronics on AI accelerator development, and is said to have completed SI recruitment based on those partnerships.
HyperAccel plans to use the new funds to kick off mass production of its next-generation LPU chip, "Verda." It also aims to speed up development of On-device AI accelerators. Its valuation discussed in the market is around 600 billion won.
An investment manager at a domestic VC said, "HyperAccel is being evaluated as the next-generation among AI fabless companies following FuriosaAI and Rebellions," adding, "Investor interest was also drawn by the fact that it is fundraising at a relatively low valuation ahead of full-fledged business expansion."