"Our competitor is Nvidia. Even if we get beaten, we are determined to get beaten in the global market."
Park Seong-hyeon, CEO of Rebellions, held a fifth-anniversary "media day" at the company's headquarters in Bundang District, Seongnam, on the 16th and spoke about the company's business vision. Rebellions is a homegrown startup that specializes in designing artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor Neural Processing Unit (NPU) chips.
With the recent close of its Series C, cumulative investment expanded to 650 billion won. Recognized with a corporate value of about 2 trillion won, it ascended to unicorn status (an unlisted startup valued at $1 billion or more). ▲Samsung Electronics ▲SK hynix ▲Arm ▲KT ▲SK Telecom ▲Saudi Aramco and others have joined as investors, earning it the nickname "Korea's flagship AI Semiconductor player."
Park cited "shifting focus from the United States to Korea" as the reason the company was able to grow. Park graduated from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) with a degree in electrical engineering and earned a master's and Ph.D. in computer science (CSAIL) from MIT. Park worked at Intel, SpaceX, and Morgan Stanley. Despite building most of a career in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, Park founded the company in Korea.
Park said, "I lived in the United States for 11 years, so I didn't even know Samsung or SK, and the initial investment came from Americans, but I decided to start the company in Korea," adding, "I thought joining the domestic semiconductor ecosystem would be the way to seize opportunities." Park added, "What allowed Rebellions to establish itself as an AI Semiconductor startup was the 'manpower' based on Samsung and SK," and said, "If we had started in the United States, we would have remained just another company that 'didn't stand out.'"
As achievements since founding, Park listed ▲attracting strategic investment from global investors and key corporations in telecom and semiconductor design and manufacturing ▲mass production of the first-generation NPU ATOM ▲commercialization of large-scale AI services based on ATOM ▲merger with SK Sapeon Korea ▲development of the big chip "RebelQuad" followed by global and corporate proof-of-concept (PoC) efforts. Park said, "The past five years were a period when the global AI infrastructure market was weighing which corporations to recognize as next-generation NPU partners," adding, "Rebellions was chosen in that process."
The semiconductor developed by Rebellions is particularly specialized in "inference" among the various areas of AI. Until now, global big tech has focused on the "training" phase of AI using graphics processing units (GPUs). But as AI services have recently entered the commercial stage, the "inference" function that affects real-world performance has grown in importance. In this process, there is a trend of attempting to lower service costs by using NPUs, which are more efficient than GPUs. The company says RebelQuad delivers performance similar to Nvidia's flagship GPUs in key inference metrics such as "latency" and "compute."
That is why Park named Nvidia, which leads the AI training and inference market, as a competitor. Park expressed a determination to capture part of Nvidia's market share in inference and deliver results. Park said, "The next five years will see the formation of a new AI infrastructure system centered on non-Nvidia," adding, "Rebellions will take the lead in that trend."
As a strength over competitors in AI inference, Park pointed to "experience running real services." The NPU "ATOM," which Rebellions developed in 2023 based on Samsung Electronics' 5-nanometer (nm; 1 nm = one-billionth of a meter) process, is currently used to power the call recording function within SK Telecom's AI service "adot." KT Cloud also commercialized the first domestic NPU-based data center equipped with ATOM. Park said, "For an AI startup, actually having a product applied to an end-user system is an extremely rare case, and it serves as a strong reference for business expansion."
The merger last December with "Sapeon Korea," SK Telecom's AI Semiconductor subsidiary, is also a positive factor for the business. Park said, "After the merger, SK hynix came on the shareholder roster of Rebellions, which has also been very helpful in explaining our business to the global market," adding, "The expansion of 'manpower' from the merger is also a major advantage."
Leveraging the experience accumulated in Korea over the five years since its founding, Rebellions is aiming to enter the global market. Marshall Choi, Rebellions' chief business officer (CBO), said, "Governments and corporations in key regions such as the United States, Japan, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia are actively seeking to diversify AI infrastructure," adding, "As a company with both technical prowess and product completeness, Rebellions will be the most competitive choice for global clients looking for alternatives beyond Nvidia." He added, "Rebellions is the company that can present the most efficient and prepared products at the moment the market clarifies."
Park said, "AI infrastructure is not an industry that can be judged by short-term results; only corporations that build an ecosystem based on long-term, large-scale investment and create value as part of it survive," adding, "Chiplet product development based on RebelQuad and global collaboration are the core foundations that allow Rebellions to expand continuously, and the role at the national level will become increasingly important in building this united front." Park added, "With the sense of responsibility that one step forward for Rebellions is one step forward for the Republic of Korea, we will become a key player in global AI infrastructure."