"Rebellion is pushing for an initial public offering (IPO) in the first half of 2026, so I believe revenue must greatly exceed 100 billion won next year. We plan to strengthen our market penetration in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States and Japan."
Park Sung-hyun, CEO of Rebellion, said after the keynote speech at the global startup festival ComeUp 2024 held in COEX, Gangnam, Seoul, on the 11th, that the artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor startup Rebellion has completed a merger with Saphion Korea on the 2nd. Rebellion's corporate value is 1.3 trillion won, which has made it the first domestic AI semiconductor company to be recognized with a value exceeding 1 trillion won, achieving 'unicorn' status. This is the first time Rebellion has specified its IPO schedule since the merger with Saphion.
Rebellion is set to launch its flagship AI accelerator product, Libel, next year, which is expected to drive the company's revenue. Rebellion, which recorded 2.7 billion won in revenue and an operating loss of 16 billion won last year, is at a point where it must prove its growth potential through performance for a successful IPO. Libel is produced through Samsung Electronics' turnkey solution. It will go into mass production next year using Samsung's 4-nanometer process and will be equipped with four units of Samsung's fifth generation high bandwidth memory (HBM3E) in 12 layers. Targeting the inference AI semiconductor market for massive language models (LLMs), Rebellion has stated that its AI semiconductor will be capable of operating a 70 billion parameter model with the highest performance and power efficiency.
With the merger with Saphion in place, Rebellion has announced its plans to intensify its global market strategy. It aims to achieve visible results first in markets such as the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Japan, where product supply has already begun. Park noted, "As we are approaching our IPO in the next two years, revenue must exceed 100 billion won next year." He added, "As Saudi Arabia has control over HBM exports, we plan to target the market with Atom, which is equipped with GDDR instead, and we will steadily expand into other Middle Eastern countries. We also plan to strengthen our approach to the U.S. and Japanese markets." Rebellion's Atom has entered full-scale mass production in the first half of this year utilizing the 5-nanometer process from Samsung Electronics.
On that day, Park revealed plans to accelerate the operation of its Saudi subsidiary to target the Middle Eastern market. Rebellion received an investment of 20 billion won from Saudi Aramco. Saudi Arabia is undertaking massive investments to establish its own AI semiconductor ecosystem. This is because, due to U.S. public export restrictions, Chinese companies facing difficulties in importing advanced semiconductors are trying to secure AI semiconductors through the Middle East, prompting the U.S. to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.
Park stated, "Saudi Arabia is a country with clear goals regarding AI and semiconductors, as seen with the announcement of 'Vision 2030' by the artificial intelligence agency. We plan to operationalize our Saudi subsidiary as a base for targeting the Middle Eastern market by hiring local engineers. Next week, Rebellion's HR manager will visit Saudi Arabia."
Rebellion plans to maximize business synergy with its second-largest shareholder, SK Group. In particular, it is currently pursuing collaboration with SK hynix, the leading company in the HBM market. Park noted, "I cannot specify which products we will collaborate on with SK hynix, but it is true that we are pushing this in various ways."