An era when generative artificial intelligence (AI) services such as ChatGPT have become part of daily life. New changes are also taking place in the semiconductor market that powers related services.
Chief Executive Park Seong-hyun of Rebellions said in a recent written interview with ChosunBiz, "Our goal is to build an AI Semiconductor and software ecosystem that can run large-scale AI services with less power and expense."
Founded in 2020, Rebellions is a fabless startup that develops NPUs (Neural Processing Unit (NPU)) specialized for AI inference. Fabless refers to corporations that do not manufacture semiconductors directly but focus on design. Rebellions is focusing on the inference domain that runs AI in real service environments. More than 70% of its workforce is focused on research and development (R&D). Its strategy is to go beyond a big tech GPU-centric market structure and secure competitiveness for a homegrown AI infrastructure.
Park majored in electrical and electronic engineering and computer science at KAIST and MIT. Park then built a career at Intel, SpaceX, and Morgan Stanley. After confirming the growth potential of the AI Semiconductor market while working in New York, Park returned to Korea with co-founders to establish the company.
Park said, "I was convinced that by leveraging Korea's outstanding semiconductor talent pool, we could more than hold our own on the global stage."
Park added, "As AI services spread, demand for inference will inevitably increase, and we expect the AI inference semiconductor market to grow to a size that far exceeds 10 times the current level within 10 years," explaining, "Training ends as a one-off process like getting in shape ahead of the Olympics, but inference is the billing realm that uses already completed models in everyday life."
Rebellions is maintaining rapid growth. In Mar. this year, it was selected as the first direct investment corporation by the Public Growth Fund and attracted a pre-IPO investment worth 640 billion won. Its cumulative investment has reached about 1.3 trillion won, and its corporate value is estimated at 3.4 trillion won. Last year's revenue was 32 billion won, more than 10 times growth from 2023.
Park said, "The biggest achievement recently is commercial performance." Park added, "Rebellions' AI Semiconductor was installed in SKT adot's call recording summary service, proving high completeness," and "It has also been successfully applied to an AI pet X-ray diagnosis service used by more than 1,050 animal hospitals, maximizing efficiency in clinical settings." Based on this, the company is expanding into finance, including pushing cooperation with KB Financial Group.
Rebellions' strength lies in power efficiency. Unlike GPUs that handle both AI training and general-purpose computation, it applies an inference-optimized architecture to significantly reduce power consumption relative to performance. It has also built a software ecosystem so developers can use their existing GPU-based environments as-is, lowering adoption barriers.
Park recalled, "Semiconductors are an industry where it takes years for results to come out," adding, "The most difficult task was maintaining direction amid the fast-changing AI market." Park said, "We initially started by developing a finance-specific AI Semiconductor, but sensing market changes, we shifted our focus to data center AI inference semiconductors."
Rebellions has established subsidiaries in the United States, Japan, and Saudi Arabia and is targeting the global market. It sees the "sovereign AI" market, where demand is growing for country-level AI infrastructure, as a key opportunity.
Park stressed, "When governments and corporations in each country seek to adopt AI while protecting Data Sovereignty, Rebellions' energy-efficient AI Semiconductor solutions can be a practical option," adding, "With pride as a representative AI Semiconductor corporation of Korea, we will carry the commercial track record proven at home onto the global stage."