This article was displayed on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove (MM) site at 1:55 p.m. on Jun. 1, 2026.
AI semiconductor startup Exina has completed a new funding round of 200 billion won. It initially aimed to raise about 100 billion won, but gathered twice as much as investor interest poured in. More than 10 institutions, including private equity fund (PEF) managers, joined as new investors.
According to the venture capital (VC) industry on the 1st, Exina finalized its Series B fundraising at 200 billion won late last month. It wrapped up at twice the target about five months after it began in earnest to contact financial investors (FI) such as VCs early this year for new funds of 100 billion won.
Atinum Investment and IMM Investment, considered leading domestic VCs, led the fundraising as lead investors. Existing FIs such as Mirae Asset Venture Investment, LB Investment, Stick Ventures, Wonik Investment Partners, and SV Investment also made follow-on investments.
In addition, more than 10 institutions joined as new investors. PEF manager KStone Partners was a representative case, and DSC Investment, Shinhan Venture Investment, Korea Development Bank, KDB Capital, Premier Partners, Kolon Investment, K2 Investment, and Partners Investment also participated.
Exina is an AI semiconductor fabless startup founded in 2022 by Chief Executive Kim Jin-young, formerly of SK hynix. It set as its main focus the development of a computing function-converged memory chip that enables faster and more efficient data exchange among central processing units (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerators, and memory.
Investors were said to have highly valued Exina's manpower and rapid pace of technology development. In addition to Kim, many key personnel, including the chief technology officer (CTO) and chief product officer (CPO), came from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, and the company planned mass production of the next-generation memory chip "MX1" this year.
MX1 was developed as a new chip based on Compute Express Link (CXL). It is called a next-generation memory following high bandwidth memory (HBM) for technology that solves large-scale data access that CPUs and GPUs struggle to handle at the memory level. It is also cited as a solution to improve AI data processing efficiency.
The fact that policy funds, including the government's K-NVIDIA nurturing project, are pouring into deep tech such as AI also drove Exina's 200 billion won fundraising. Institutions rushed to secure equity in promising technology corporations before policy funds push valuations even higher.
A VC industry official said, "AI Semiconductor startups drawing attention recently are seeing such strong market interest that they can meet their funding targets through fundraising from existing investors alone," adding, "More than 10 new investors joined Exina's fundraising, but demand was even higher than that."
Meanwhile, Exina plans to use the new funds to develop next-generation CXL Memory products and strengthen global sales capabilities. Its valuation has exceeded 800 billion won. It jumped to about three times the 250 billion won valuation recognized in the 60 billion won Series A fundraising in 2024.